Notes from the North

Edinburgh seems to have gone mad for Christmas although perhaps it feels more unhinged and frantic than usual because the lights and tinsel are in such marked contrast to what we know is happening in other regions of this plundered and war-torn planet. Even the august frontage of the Royal College of Physicians at no 9 Queen Street has decked itself out to look like a landlocked lighthouse  By the late afternoon Princes Street is all but impassable on both sides of the road. The screams from the fair-ground rides echo out far above Walter Scott, sitting impassively in his monument.   As to what Adam Black (1784 – 1874), would have to say about the hordes milling round his statue in Princes Street gardens, snacking on frankfurters and donuts and glugging down lager or warmish red wine … it’s just as well he’s a speechless stone effigy.  Black was a publisher active during the heyday of the Scottish Enlightenment. He bought the copyright of the Encyclopædia Britannica in 18...