Tag Archives: Scotland

Edinburgh

I love Edinburgh, the blackened houses, the classical street plan, the New Town, the fact that there is so little new development, the back streets behind the façades and the views out towards the Kingdom of Fife.   Walking across the city from end to end in the early night, not a car, let alone a taxi, in sight, I was struck by how extraordinarily coherent it is, not a wrong note, as I went from Broughton Street in the east, through streets named in honour of Nelson’s victories, as each generation added street after street according to a consistent vocabulary, right through to the 1840s, and all miraculously preserved by a conservative Edinburgh establishment who have not allowed high rise:-

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Scotland

It is hard not to give thought to Scotland this morning and to the implications of the vote.   I’ve been trying to work out how Scottish I am.   My mother always claimed to be part Scottish through the Buchanan Wollastons which gave us a right to wear the hideous Buchanan tartan.   And my father was part Leslie, a better tartan I always thought.   So, I suppose that, like many of the British, I feel a sense of long histories intertwined and a mild sense of relief that the Union has been preserved.

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