Product Description

The late poet laureate, Sir John Betjeman, said that Edinburgh was the most beautiful city in Europe. Like some other great cities it is set on seven hills. But only one of these, Rome, rivals Edinburgh in matching the beauty of its setting with the stateliness of its buildings. A romantic landscape of sea and hills, broad vistas and hidden corners is embellished by a style of architecture combining stern classicism with antiquarian whimsy. Edinburgh, too, provides the backdrop to much of the dark drama of the Scottish past, but the 1,500 year history of the city itself deserves wider telling. Long ruled by a strait-laced professional bourgeoisie, Edinburgh never suppressed a livelier side, peopled by figures comic or brutal, eccentric or gruesome.

Michael Fry, who has lived and worked there for nearly forty years, provides a compellingly readable account of this great city, from the earliest times to the present, balancing Edinburgh’s cultural, political and social history, and shows how they have borne on one another. He draws on a wide range of new untapped archival sources, especially private papers and oral records, and paints a vivid a picture of the city of John Knox and James Boswell, of David Hume and Walter Scott, a city - that like Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll – is both dark and light, both ‘Auld Reekie’ and ‘the Athens of the North’.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49361 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 456 pages

Review
'intelligent and sensitive...a very good book indeed, one that no one who knows Edinburgh will want to be without, one that also reveals the character of this dramatic, admirable and often infuriating city to those unfortunate enough not to be acquainted with it.'
--Literary Review

'A very fine book and a considerable achievement. Anyone with an interest in Edinburgh or Scotland will find something elucidatory to enjoy on every page.'
--Ross Leckie - Country Life

'Accessible and readable study of the Scottish capital.'
--Times Literary Supplement

Review
'Fry's range is impressive. His account of Edinburgh is in the style of Peter Ackroyd's history of London - digging into its dark corners rather than maintaining a historian's narrative'

Review
`His account of the city's architectural history is as intelligent and sensitive as it is full.'

Customer Reviews

Edinburgh A history of the CIty
I was attracted to this book as a result of an extract in a weekend supplement. I have not finished reading it but am well satisfied so far, praise indeed from a Glaswegian !!!

Wide ranging, well written...but
A thorough and wide-ranging survey of the city, that avoids the usual urban history traps. Fry does not focus on the city's architecture, for instance, though he discusses it in its context; nor is this a municipal history, although the City Council's development and influence get their due throughout. The book is well written and generally pacy, and does not shy away from the more difficult, undocumented early history of the city, although this era is, inevitably perhaps, more a Scottish than a city history. The role of the city as a backdrop for the later Stuart history and the Jacobite era is particularly well written, covering the ground without retelling the well-worn and hackneyed tales, and providing new, and distinctively Edinburgh, dimensions to these upheavals. This is a good, well-structured and non-pedestrian history, make no mistake. Whilst retaining a broad chronological structure, the discussion is not rigidly linear and Fry moves backwards as well as forwards in his chapters, to good effect, if at times keeping the reader on edge wondering when this or that topic will ever be raised!

Any city history has to be selective, though, especially as municipality develops and record keeping becomes more through and more reliable, and it may be churlish to criticise Fry for doing what any historian has to do. Yet there are some significant omissions from this discussion. The focus is very much on the city centre, and although suburban development is mentioned en passant the suburban geography is not discussed at all. Railways are covered as an afterthought, and their impact in broadening city-dwellers' horizons and experiences is not explored at all; indeed, public transport, surely a vital factor in the city's spread, gets no coverage whatsoever - and while I applaud Fry for avoiding the boring company histories of bus and tram, they did surely have something to do with the way the city developed in the Victorian era and still have an impact today. Iconic structures such as the Forth bridges are barely mentioned, but surely had some impact, if only on recognition and perception? Roads, streets, cars, parks, cemeteries...all vitally important parts of the present fabric of the city, but left for others to consider, Fry has little or nothing to say of these. The public utilities - water, gas, electricity - are also overlooked, but perhaps are not sufficiently remarkable or distinctive in this city.

Social history is also underplayed. Education coverage focuses primarily on the university (and here Fry does get boring, we surely don't need to get the detailed politics he gives here) while health, and especially housing, are underplayed. Drugs are covered, but not social care, and not sport. Class issues and their consequences are explored, as are the many contradictions of the city, not least in the public and private realms of religion, but gender issues are less well explored. I would also have liked more on politics, especially towards the end when devolution surely reawakens the historic role of the capital rather more prominently than Fry allows, and a discussion of civic pride in the national (and nationalist) context would have been more welcome than the blow by blow account of the RBS/Standard Chartered merger (which came along just when I was wondering if the financial centre would ever be mentioned at all).

The index is very disappointing with several possible entries missing. But the biggest omission, in my view, is any map showing the progress of the city's development and expansion. This would have greatly aided a reader like me, familiar with the city generally but not a local resident.

On the whole, though, this is a good, well-written history that is an enjoyable read; I got it for Christmas and have enjoyed working my way through it over the holiday week. It is never dull, and not at all academic in tone, but comes across as a well-researched and authoritative book albeit with gaps that leave room for others to follow. It should appeal to the general reader as much, if not more so, as to a more specifically academic student of the city.