Essence of Edinburgh

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About the Book: 

‘This book is a personal journey – an eccentric odyssey – exploring aspects of past and present, people and places. It is an evocation rather than a history.’

A city of fascinating unpredictability is how Jenni Calder describes Edinburgh. In an eccentric odyssey that is equally fascinating and unpredictable, she discovers the essence of the city beyond the iconic centre. With a passionate sense of place, she evokes personal experience alongside vivid accounts of Edinburgh given by others. In the Grassmarket, she recalls Sir Walter Scott’s dramatisations of riot and public execution. On Blackford Hill, she takes pleasure in the account given by the ‘Silent Traveller’ Chiang Yee of walking backwards to the summit. Crossing the Dean Bridge brings to mind Naomi Mitchison’s imagined descent into the vertiginous Dean Gorge. Jenni Calder’s journeys through this most ‘walkable’ of cities brings a new appreciation of Edinburgh into being.

About the Author:

JENNI CALDER was born in Chicago, educated in the United States and England, and has lived in or near Edinburgh since 1971. After several years of part-time teaching and freelance writing, including three years in Kenya, she worked at the National Museums of Scotland from 1978 to 2001 successively as education officer, Head of Publications, script editor for the Museum of Scotland, and latterly as Head of Museum of Scotland International. In the latter capacity her main interest was in emigration and the Scottish diaspora. She has written and lectured widely on Scottish, English and American literary and historical subjects, and writes fiction and poetry as Jenni Daiches. She has two daughters, a son and a dog.