City of Literature

Busy day today, so wanted some fresh air after work, and ended blipping about Edinburgh, as the world's first City of Literature (2004), so here is a blip of Robert Louis Stevenson's house in Heriot Row. We all remember Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona ...

Challenge anyone who doubts Edinburgh’s claim to be a literary city to come up with another capital whose main station is named after a novel (Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley), one of whose football teams is named after another (The Heart of Midlothian – Scott, again) and whose main shopping street is home to the biggest monument to an author in Britain, with the Scott Monument (another tick) in Princes Street.

Edinburgh has inspired thousands of writers in the past, among them Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle, while there’s no shortage of contemporary authors local to the city such as Irvine Welsh, JK Rowling, Alexander McCall Smith, Iain Banks and Ian Rankin. Rankin, the UK’s best-selling crime writer, set his Inspector Rebus detective series in the city and credits it as his muse: ‘I started writing novels while an undergraduate student, in an attempt to make sense of the city of Edinburgh, using a detective as my protagonist. Each book adds another piece to the jigsaw that is modern Scotland, asking questions about the nation’s politics, economy, psyche and history… and perhaps pointing towards its possible future.’

Not only does it inspire, but Edinburgh also hosts the world’s biggest book festival every summer. Also, it was the birthplace of Scottish printing in 1508!

Yes, Edinburgh is a very literature rich city ... now, where is my copy of 'Hello' magazine.

I hope everyone has had a good day.