The combination of Covid-19 travel restrictions and greater awareness about the way polluting ways of getting around are heating up the planet has already created a new interest in slow travel and local travel. Here's a look at the way Edinburgh used to be. Words by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about my books and blogs).
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| You can buy cards of this design on the publisher's website, the evocatively named Manderley Press. |
I have only ever arrived at Edinburgh by train: it's a very dramatic arrival point. Emerging from the station you are soon surrounded by the greenery of Princes Street Gardens with the westward vista of cliffs dominated by the castle.
No other UK city offers the visitor quite such an entrance, which might be why the first book from new publishing house, Manderley Press, is a reprint of Robert Louis Stephenson's classic, Edinburgh: picturesque notes. As a bonus it's got an introduction by Alexander McCall Smith (author of Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and 44 Scotland Street) who is probably the city’s current most famous writer in residence.
This travel guide may be an oldie, first published in 1878 when RLS was just pushing 30-years-old, but Edinburgh is still super-readable. Savouring it in London I'm desperate to go this Scottish city again and of course it helps that my daughter is now working in Leith.
In this travelogue you take a journey through (mostly) bad weather around the Old Town via the New Town, up on to Calton Hill via the Parliament and Greyfriars church, sometimes catching views of the Pentland Hills spotting rich and poor. It’s all today familiar but you are also time travelling through the Georgian period in this rocky Scottish city.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) is well known for his classic adventure tales, Treasure Island and Kidnapped but was also a popular travel writer back in the day. RLS spent most of his early life living at 17 Herriot Row in Edinburgh's New Town where he developed his storytelling skills, despite periods of ill health, aided by the magic of gas lights indoors and a habit of wandering the streets day or night. This juxtaposition of comfortable family life, middle class gossip and Edinburgh poverty must have helped him conjure up the chilling story of The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde - spoiler alert they are one and the same person. Similarly, when RLS writes about Edinburgh he makes clear how the city he loves also has two sides - the gleaming beauty and the “slatternly” (as he calls it) poverty which was mostly down the hill or almost underground. That said, there's no moralising in the book, it's more a dreamlike wander through Edinburgh’s weather-struck streets – sometimes peeping through a window, but never going inside - and I heartily recommend it.
I'm now very keen to see how my memory matches with RLS's version and the reality. And the perfect excuse to find out might well be to visit Edinburgh's big Christmas markets which run until the new year.
Of course for keen readers could hunt out a secondhand copy, but if that’s not available then I loved this 2021 edition from www.manderleypress.com which specialises in finding books that celebrate "memorable buildings, cities and landmarks". The print, was also a generous size with decent leading, perfect for anyone with over 40-year-old eyesight. The splendid book jacket and internal illustrations are by another Edinburgh fan and resident, Ian McIntosh, who is sometimes known as the man “who draws for Alexander McCall Smith”. What's lovely is that these are also available as greeting cards - perfect for Edinburgh fans.
- Edinburgh by Robert Louis Stevenson, Manderley Press, Nov 2021. £16.99
- Edinburgh's Christmas markets are from 20 November 2021 - 4 January 2022.
