Edinburgh

Edinburgh can surely boast the richest literary heritage of almost any major city in Britain. Standing on the sometimes windswept south bank of the Firth of Forth, and presided over by an ancient castle and the extinct volcano of Arthur's Seat, the spacious Georgian streets and squares of Edinburgh's New Town, coupled with the tenements and narrow wynds of its historic Old Town, have echoed down the centuries with the footsteps of world-famous native writers such as Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. There have been many illustrious literary visitors too, including Samuel Johnson, Robert Burns, Charles Dickens. Muriel Spark and Irvine Welsh. This book explores their connection with the city and ends with a postscript celebrating the 21 years of the Edinburgh International Book Festival.