Edinburgh Books

The Edinburgh Graveyard Guide: A Spooky Saunter Through Edinburgh's Chilling Cemetries Edinburgh is renowned for its history and its scenery, but dig deeper and you will find beauty spots with a difference. This handy guide to the treasures of the capital's cemetries unearths the historical fact, the little-known tale and the truth beyond the grave. Take a walk down the Royal Mile, from the Castle to Holyrood Palace, and discover forgotten graveyards in the heart of the city. Here, amid the echoes of the past, are tales of the famous and the infamous, legends of incredible deaths and strange goings-on. Dare to venture further and you will find more sinister sites, such as the burial grounds of the Old Town and the New Town, which mark the final resting place of Edinburgh's finest and most feared. Now, over 175 since Burke and Hare stalked the capital's cobbled streets, the dead are brought to life once more. Enjoy your morbid meander with this book as your guide and, perhaps, your protection. Some featured graveyards are: Edinburgh Castle, Greyfriars, St Giles, Canongate, Holyrood, Old Calton, New Calton, St John's, St Cuthbert's, Buccleuch, Colington, Grange, Warriston, Piershill.

The Making of Classical Edinburgh In this exposition of the making of the much quoted, photographed, studied and loved townscapes of Georgian Edinburgh, A.J. Youngson's recreates and brings to life one of the most comprehensive, detailed and remarkable urban expansion programmes ever undertaken. Illustrated with over 160 photographs and line drawings, it should be an invaluable work of history and an account of the shaping of one of the most beautiful cities in Europe.

A Traveller's Companion to Edinburgh Edinburgh is a city whose history is written on its face. The Old Town on its crowded rock, sloping down from the Castle to Holyroodhouse, has not significantly changed its atmosphere since the turbulent fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when riots, processions, or public executions jammed the High Street. And the very different era that followed the bloody religious wars of the seventeenth century is epitomized by the elegant streets and squares of the New Town - the eighteenth-century Enlightenment whose writers, philosophers and lawyers made Edinburgh famous. This anthology of extracts from letters, memoirs, diaries, novels and biographies of interesting visitors and inhabitants, including the writings of Scott, Boswell, Cockburn, John Knox and many others, recreates for today's visitors the drama, the history, and the life of the city in buildings and places that can still be visited. The daring Scottish recapture of the Castle from the English in 1313; the confrontation between Calvinist John Knox and Catholic Mary Queen of Scots in Holyroodhouse; an eye-witness account of the execution of Montrose at the Mercat Cross in 1650; reeking slop-pails in the wynds and polite manners in the ballrooms. Edinburgh Books.

Lost Edinburgh Now Edinburgh is a prosperous and expanding city, developed from a small community spawned on a narrow rock to become the Capital of Scotland. From its mean beginnings, wretched accommodation, no comfortable houses, no soft beds' visiting French knights complained in 1341, it went on to attract some of the world's greatest architects to design and build and shape a unique city. But over the centuries many of those fine buildings have gone. Invasion and civil strife played their part. Some simply collapsed of old age and neglect, others were swept away in the 'improvements' of the nineteenth century. Yet more fell to the developers' swathe of destruction in the twentieth century. Few were immune as much of the medieval architectural history vanished in the Old Town; Georgian Squares were attacked; Princes Street ruined; old tenements razed in huge slum clearance drives, and once familiar and much loved buildings vanished. The changing pattern of industry, social habits, health service, housing and road systems all took their toll. Not even the city wall was immune. The buildings which stood in the way of what was deemed progress are the heritage of Lost Edinburgh. Edinburgh Books.

Historic South Edinburgh This is the story - spanning eight centuries, of the growth of the South Side of Edinburgh, from the Grange to Craiglockhart, from Bruntsfield to Swanston, but with special emphasis on Morningside. Edinburgh Books.

Bygone Edinburgh (Bygone) Edinburgh is a city of two halves: the medieval city with its twisting lanes dominated by the castle and St Giles and the New Town, constructed predominantly in the 18th century, with its grandiose terraces and wide streets. As well as being Scotlands capital, also called 'the Athens of the north', Edinburgh is a major commercial and industrial city with large suburbs and a port area on the south side of the Forth estuary. In order to function as a city, Edinburgh needed an efficient public transport network and, with a network of suburban railways, now largely closed, and trams and buses courtesy of the Corporation, the city was able to operate effectively. Bygone Edinburgh is a follow-up to Gavin Booths Streets of Edinburgh, recording Edinburgh in the period between 1945 and 1980, and like the earlier book, shows the ever changing streetscape of the city. Many of the 85 colour illustrations are previously unpublished and include some aspect of public transport, such as the trams and buses, with other photographs showing a wider variety of subjects, including railway and street scenes. The Streets of and Bygone series have tapped into a rich seam of nostalgia for the lost towns and cities of the British Isles, appealing both to the transport enthusiast who find the historic views of buses and trams of interest, but also to a local audience who are fascinated by the snapshot that the books offer to their home towns. This new addition to a successful series will be sought after by all those who know Edinburgh and those with an interest in its history.

Sun Behind the Castle: Edinburgh Poems The Edinburgh of Angus Calder's poems is not the city of summer tourism and landmark buildings. It is the all-the-year-round arena of lingering mists or brilliant sunlight on grey stone, where seagulls and pigeons command the early-morning streets, curlers sweep their ice at Murrayfield and coarse sportsmen revel on the Meadows. Edinburgh Books.

Greyfriars Bobby: The Real Story at Last Forbes Macgregor's bestselling book 'Greyfriars Bobby: The Real Story at Last' contains previously unpublished information which explodes many of the myths concerning the famous Skye terrier and his master, John Gray. The framework of the story is fully documented but reports from contemporary newspapers of the 1850s and 1860s and other historical sources have been used to provide an intriguing and colourful background of life in the Old Town of Edinburgh in the early Victorian era. This book includes actual photographs of Bobby and eyewitness accounts. Edinburgh Books.

John Knox House: Gateway to the Old Town John Knox House is one of Scotland's most important medieval buildings, and its site has for centuries been the hub of the city's commercial, cultural and religious identity. This text presents a history of the site, incorporating the story of Sir James Mossman, who died for his faith in 1573. Edinburgh Books.

Ghostly Tales and Sinister Stories of... Edinburgh. This is a collection of over 100 tales of murder, ghosts and ghouls, body-snatching and witch-burning, which reveal the darker side of genteel Edinburgh's history. Included are the macabre exploits of the capital's infamous villains - Deacon Brodie, and Burke and Hare.

The Ghost That Haunted Itself: The Story... Greyfriar's Cemetery in Edinburgh has a centuries-old reputation for being haunted. Its gruesome history includes use as a mass prison, headstone removal, witchcraft, bodysnatching, desecration, corpse dumping and live burial. In 1998 something new and inexplicable began occurring in the graveyard. Visitors encountered "cold spots", strange smells and banging noises. They found themselves overcome by nausea, or cut and bruised by something they could not see. Over a space of two years, 24 people were knocked unconscious. Homes next to the graveyard wall became plagued by crockery smashing, objects moving and unidentified laughter. Witnesses to these attacks ran into the hundreds. There were two exorcisms of the area. Both failed. The section of Greyfriars where the attacks occurred is now chained shut. The entity responsible has been named the "McKenzie Poltergeist". It has become one of the best-documented and most conclusive paranormal cases in history. The poltergeist is still growing stronger.

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