Founder of the Edinburgh Festival. Born in Edinburgh, the son of a paper-maker, Wood was educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh College of Art and the University of Edinburgh. An excellent student, he was appointed to a lectureship in English Literature on his graduation. In 1940, having been declared unfit for military service, he was given the job of establishing the British Council in Edinburgh, with the aim of running English classes and cultural events for the Polish, Norwegian, Czech and French servicemen and refugees who came to Scotland. With his friend the poet Edwin Muir (1887 - 1959), he organised events which brought artists, musicians, poets and writers to Edinburgh, and mounted an exhibition The Art of our Allies in the National Gallery of Scotland. After the Second World War he brought this experience to bear by proposing an Edinburgh International Festival, which he mounted for the first time in 1947. He ran the festival until 1950, when he was appointed the British Council's representative in France, thereafter he worked in London and then Italy, before retiring from the British Council in 1965 to return to the University of Edinburgh, where he undertook research on Scottish literature. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1943 and was awarded an OBE in 1948. Wood spent his final years in London, where he died. His daughter Harriet Harvey Wood also worked for the British Council, doing much to promote female writers and serving as a judge of the Booker Prize in 1992.
