Auld Reekie - Ralph Lownie

For centuries Edinburgh, "the most beautiful city in Europe" according to John Betjeman, has inspired affection, admiration, and awe from both natives and visitors alike. This absorbing anthology has cast a net far and wide, trawling through speeches, memoirs, letters, poetry, novels, journals, lectures, and guides. Spanning 500 years of the city's history, from the Municipal Proclamation after the Battle of Floden to the novels of Ian Rankin, names as celebrated as Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson stand alongside less familiar visitors such as the Chinese writer Chiang Yee. This book will be treasured by all those who love the city of Edinburgh and the hundreds of thousands of visitors drawn every year to Auld Reekie, now in the full flood of social, political, and cultural renaissance which might tempt some to regard Athens as the "Edinburgh of the South."