Read Your Way Through Edinburgh

Read Your Way Around the World is a series exploring the globe through books.

There are two inevitable reactions when you tell people you live in Edinburgh. The first is an exclamation — Oh, I love Edinburgh! — that tends to be followed by a wistful sigh and a disquisition about skylines or craggy hills. The second is a question that is always accompanied by a shiver: Isn’t it cold?

To which my answer is, well, yes, for at least a third of the year, but the blackened silhouettes of the crenelated medieval buildings and the rearing inclines of the volcanic topography are best seen when etched against a pearl-grey winter sky, covered in a scree of sleet and ice and … wait, come back.

The city that’s been my home for 12 years has always been defined by its dualities and contrasts. The elegant Georgian symmetry of the New Town’s squares are divided from the twisting, dark alleyways of the medieval Old Town by the deep-cut gully of Princes Street Gardens. There’s an 11-month stretch of the year when Edinburgh is a relatively sedate, quiet city, and then there’s the roller-coaster ride of August when the whole place becomes an all-hours, hedonistic frenzy of Fringe shows, mime acts, jugglers and street food. Some residents cower indoors until it’s all over; others cash in and ship out, renting their places to festival goers. I like to see as many surreal and inventive shows as I can.

What should I read before I pack my bags?

If you are going to read one book before you visit Edinburgh, let it be the unparalleled “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” by Muriel Spark. A short but potent novel about a school mistress who exerts a powerful influence over a select group of favored pupils (the “crème de la crème”), it is about adolescence, politics, the shifting sands of loyalty, the curse of hindsight — and Edinburgh. The city is ever-present, as backdrop and foil, as Miss Brodie walks her charges across the Meadows or takes them to tea in Cramond, talking, always talking. If anyone would like to school themselves in a certain brand of posh Edinburgh accent, watch the film adaptation, starring a young Maggie Smith. And then practice saying “girls” with her precise, clipped intonation.

What book would give me an insight into the hidden history of the city?

“Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection,” by T.M. Devine, offers an insightful and well-researched slant on Scotland’s ties with slavery and the slave trade. Devine doesn’t let anyone off the hook; the book can also be used as an alternative guide to the true history of certain city buildings, landmarks and statues.

If I have no time for day trips, what books could take me farther afield instead?

Reflecting the architecture of its Old Town, Edinburgh is linked with a great deal of Gothic fiction. Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Kidnapped” takes place in a gratifyingly crumbling and gloomy castle to the north of the city, where a young lad must tussle for his inheritance — and, ultimately, his very life — with an evil old uncle. Or there is James Hogg’s strange, unsettling “The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner,” in which the narrator is pursued around the city and the countryside by a terrifying avatar named Gil-Martin.