Edinburgh

This is a History Extra production. How did the world's greatest cities become just that? Great. Was it location, determination or simple serendipity? This is the question behind history's greatest cities from History Extra. I'm Paul Bloomfield, travel writer and history buff, and in the second of our two festive bonus episodes, we're visiting a city that really lights up at New Year. Edinburgh, Scotland's magnificent capital. We'll roam its castle and original old town, tracing medieval walls and venturing into closes and tenements, as well as exploring its expansion and evolution through more recent centuries. We'll meet some of the colourful characters involved in its development and lead listeners through the most captivating historic sights and moments, including the colours and sounds of Hogman 8. We'll taste its flavours and sample cultural delight too, as well as sharing insider tips. Today, I'm delighted to be joined by Rosemary Goring. Rosemary is a Scottish writer, editor and journalist, currently a columnist for The Herald, the world's longest-running national newspaper. She is also the author of a number of books about her home country, including Scotland, The Autobiography, published by Penguin. Her latest book is Homecoming, the Scottish Years of Mary, Queen of Scots, set partly in Edinburgh and published by Berlin. In this episode, we'll follow Rosemary through the alleys, closes and circuses of Edinburgh, exploring its fortifications, churches, tenements and museums. On the way, we'll discuss just what made Edinburgh great, the episodes and opportunities that transformed an ancient defensive site on top of a volcanic crag into a major centre of power, faith, commerce and learning. We'll also meet some of the figures who played pivotal roles in the development of Edinburgh and discover a few less known places to visit for insights into its past. Rosemary, welcome. Hello. Could you start by giving us your boardroom sales pitch? In 60 seconds or less, tell us why someone with an interest in history should visit Edinburgh. When you arrive in Edinburgh, you are just surrounded by history from the very first glimpse of it in the centre. If you came out of Waverley Station, it's self-historic because it's named for a novel. It's the only station in the world named after a novel. History is all around you. You see Edinburgh Castle right in front of you on this soaring crag and you can see just in the architecture that this is a very ancient place. But what's interesting about the history of Edinburgh for those who are interested in the past, it's not just one kind of history, it's religious history, it's political, philosophical, scientific and, of course, cultural and literary. So there's all sorts of history for people here. Thank you for that very enticing introduction. Now we've got an idea of what makes Edinburgh so alluring for history lovers. Could you outline five or six key moments in the city story and point us towards places where that past can still be seen today? Yes, of course. Well, I think the history of Edinburgh starts on the Castle Rock, this volcanic plug with a fantastic view over the Lothians and across to Fife, across the Firth of Forth. And recent archaeological digs on it have discovered that it's been inhabited for at least 3,000 years. When the Romans marched into Scotland, which was a dark day for Scotland, this was in the 1st century AD, they discovered that the Castle Rock was already the fortress of this very important Celtic tribe called the Votadini, who actually did a deal with the Romans, which I'm not sure that was a good thing, but probably it saved their skins. And so since prehistory, this has been a fortress and a settlement and since then it has just gone on to become a great castle and the place where kings and history was made. The next really important date in recorded history is the 17th of July, 1124. And that's when King David I granted Edinburgh a royal charter. Now at this time, Edinburgh was little more than what we would call a village at the moment. And even when he gave it the royal charter and for many centuries afterwards, the actual city remained only about 143 acres. But by bestowing a royal charter on it, this allowed Edinburgh actually to become a city and to flourish and to develop its own rules and regulations, become a proper place of commerce. And where you can actually see this is in the medieval layout of the royal mile, which has been described as like a herringbone. It sort of weaves its way down from the castle, which is at the very top of the volcano. And you almost have this sort of skier slope, a full mile down to the palace of Holy Root House at the foot of it. And this medieval narrow street was filled with high, high buildings, really encroaching on themselves. And then they all had sort of long pieces of land off them. So this is why it looks a bit like a herringbone skeleton. And perhaps the most important buildings from that period are the St Margaret's Chapel, which is within Edinburgh Castle walls. And that's the oldest building in Edinburgh. And you can see it from Princess Street. You can see it from anywhere with a view of the castle. And this was David, his tribute to his mother, Margaret, who became a saint. A difficult woman, I think, but nevertheless, she became a saint. And the other building perhaps to mention is Holy Root Abbey, right at the foot of the royal mile, as I described. And that David endowed the Abbey and it became a centre for religion and for calendary. And in time, it became sort of the unofficial parliament of Scotland as well. So those two buildings really tell you about that period of history. Was it the case that it was important as a centre for trade, for commerce? What was it that led David to endow it with the charter at that time? He was doing this with one or two cities. So at this point, Edinburgh was not the capital of Scotland, a place called Roxburgh in the Borders was officially seen as the capital. But because of Edinburgh's location, it was in such a fertile area that it became a centre of commerce and of lots of different activities simply because of accessibility. It took centuries for it to turn into a proper capital, you know, as politics and commerce and culture all kind of came together within it. I would suggest that the next really big date and one that I think will resonate with a lot of people when they think about Scotland is the reformation of 1560, which was led by the great John Knox, former priest turned reformist. He had picked up ideas from Europe from Martin Luther and Calvin. And within Scotland, there was this amazing turnover almost overnight in 1560. The country turned from Catholic to Protestant, which was a massive cultural and psychological shift. And just one year after the reformation, Mary Queen of Scots, who had been in France for her own safety and had been Queen of France as well as Queen of Scotland, returned as a young widow to Edinburgh. And she was a Catholic, Catholic to the core. There was no way that she was going to become Protestant. And you saw during these years the great turmoil of having a Protestant country and a Catholic Queen, which of course eventually led to her downfall. If you want to actually see evidence of this period, which was one of the most colourful in Scotland's history, John Knox's house is still there on the Royal Mile, sort of two thirds of the way down the Royal Mile. This lovely medieval, twisty building. Mary Queen of Scots, who lived in Holyrood Palace, never really liked Edinburgh. And I wonder sometimes if it's partly because she was so close to John Knox's house, she and he had a very thorny relationship. He didn't believe that women should rule, had what it took to be a ruler. He reduced her to tears in their first meeting when he told her that if somebody, king or queen, did not rule well, then the people had every right to get rid of them. And by get rid of them, he probably didn't just mean ask them to move out of the country. So this was an incredible sort of Republican charge from John Knox. And yet I think they had a sort of grudging respect for each other at the same time. So this Holyrood Palace, where Mary Queen of Scots lived, not liking it very much, but she lived in a tower, part of the palace that was like a tower, which had been built by her father, James the Fifth. And part of the palace had also been built by her grandfather, James the Fourth. So she was surrounded by memories of her past there. And one other very interesting building is just off the Royal Mile, in a place called Blackfriars Street. And this was the house of the Earl of Morton, who was one of Scotland's regents, once Mary had had to go to England and was in captivity. And his house now is a youth hostel, but it's very interesting to see. And I should mention that he was executed eventually as well. So next up, I would pick the Enlightenment era as just so important, not just for Edinburgh, but for all of Scotland and indeed the international community too. There's not a specific date for this, but it's the kind of period 1760 to 1800, when there was just the most astonishing flowering of intellectual activity and thought in Edinburgh, people coming to Edinburgh or people who lived there already, great philosopher such as David Hume, who was also a famous atheist. You have people like Adam Smith, the first economist whose wealth of nations just transformed the way that people thought about people and money. And how economies worked. You have scientists like James Hutton who discovered that the earth wasn't as young as the Bible would have had you believed. There's an astonishing concatenation of people. And one specific date I would pick out in the middle of this, which sort of represents the Enlightenment idea, is in 1752, the provost of Edinburgh, George Drummond, put forward a proposal for a brand new town to be built. Not exactly a new town, but an extension, if you like, of Edinburgh, to be built on the other side of the Loch, which was running alongside the old town. So at this point, Edinburgh was extraordinarily tight, teeming congested and incredibly insanitary. So the old town of Edinburgh, where everybody lived in the same tenements, different floors with different types and class of people, was just bulging at the seams. And so the idea was to build a new and gracious and wealthy part of the town on the other side of the city. And there was a competition for this, and this was won by James Craig. If you want to get an idea of Enlightenment, Edinburgh, go to the new town and look at these fabulous crescent, these sweeping Georgian buildings with great pillars, wonderful views of just row by row of similar houses, but they're so elegant. Honestly, I just walk around the new town so often in awe, particularly just as it's getting dark and people put their lights on and you can look inside and you see people living as they had lived back in the late 1700s and the early 1800s. For the actual Enlightenment itself, if you want to follow the history of some of the great figures, you have the grave of Adam Smith in the beautiful Canongate Kirk, which is at the bottom of the royal mile in that graveyard as well, not to be gloomy, but there's also the poet Robert Ferguson, who was Robert Burns's great muse, and Robert Burns actually had his grave built. Ferguson was a very sad figure, a terrific poet, a really sort of dissolute young man who died of syphilis in an insane asylum, but was just the spark for a lot of poetic inspiration. And so you also can find a place such as Adam Ferguson, the philosopher's house up near the university, and this is where Robert Burns and Walter Scott, who was just a very young boy at the time, met for the first time two of the great literary figures who helped make Edinburgh's name. So you can follow in the footsteps of the people who created the Enlightenment, but you can also just get the idea of this amazing efflorescence of ideas and the idea of getting away from religion, this terrible hold that religion had had on Scotland, which was a very doer country at this point. As soon as people felt that they could actually legally and safely say they didn't believe in God, I feel that Scotland started on its new and sort of modern journey. After this, and I am jumping over centuries here, and it really pains me to have to do this, you only gave me five or six points, and honestly we could be here all day with how much there is to say about Edinburgh. But I've picked 1947, so 1947 when the Edinburgh Festival was born. This was the idea of Rudolf Bing, who was an Austrian refugee, who had been in charge of the Glindborn Opera Festival, and he felt that right in the wake of the Second World War, it was important to have a city that had a great international festival. And Edinburgh was chosen for various reasons, including how extraordinarily beautiful it is, but also because it had all the theatres and places that you could hold a really major festival. And interestingly, 1947 was the start of the Edinburgh Festival, but in the very first year, the fringe also began, so this isn't some kind of new adjunct. And so suddenly, you have a city which is known for being kind of dur and a bit miserable and still a bit puritanical, nothing of the sort. Edinburgh people love the festival, so don't believe it when people say that they just tolerate it. They are the people who have actually helped this festival to flourish. And you will see all through the city that, you know, if you want to find the festival, the time to do it is actually during the festival, because it's actually the atmosphere rather than the actual buildings. You can't look at a theatre and say, well, that's evidence of the Edinburgh Festival because it's going on, you know, there are plays going on all through the year. But what you find during the actual festival is that the fringe and the festival people just spilling out onto the streets. It was in the 1970s that they were allowed to actually have sort of street acts. This was deemed finally possible. And Edinburgh is just so alive, it's extraordinary. And all the world comes to Edinburgh at this time of year, so that not only did the festival make it a place where people could come together, but it turned what was a political capital into a cultural capital. So a pivotal moment in the city's history. And finally, I couldn't talk about Edinburgh without mentioning the new parliament, the new Scottish parliament, which is just a stone's throw away from Holyrood Palace. In 1707, Scotland went into a union with England and many people still feel very bitter about this. But in 1999, after Scotland had been granted devolution, the new parliament set up and it was reconvened and Scotland has become much more politically vibrant and contentious, you might say. There's still a lot of people who are hoping for the move to independence. And there's just as many people who want to remain with the union, with the rest of the UK. And the building that epitomises this, obviously, is Enrique Morales's very interesting depiction of what a parliament ought to be. It's quite a quirky building. From the outside, it's not really that ostentatious. I think it really has a feel of the Middle Ages, because where it's located is obviously in the medieval part of Edinburgh. And the windows are a slightly odd shape, but actually that is an homage to Rayburn's painting, famous painting of the skating minister on Duddingston Loch, the minister who had his back leg just with his skate just slightly behind him like a slightly teetering duck or swan. But inside the parliament is beautiful, and the debating chamber is lovely. I think it feels like you've walked into an upturned boat or ship, and I'm one of its fans. And there are people who don't like it, but you have to have a look at the parliament if you're visiting Edinburgh. Wonderful. Well, that was a fascinating whistle-stop tour of really 900-plus years of history, and full of really fascinating characters. Obviously, we've got kings and queens and enlightenment thinkers and people involved in the arts. I'd like to ask you to introduce us to one other key character who played a role in the city's history, and just outline how they were involved. I would choose James Boswell, who is such an interesting personality. He was a lawyer, an advocate, which is the equivalent of a barrister in England. And he was a sort of dual personality, and often when people talk about Edinburgh, they talk about dual personality of it. Very respectable by day and not at all respectable by night. Boswell, who wasn't a bad lawyer, had a strong conscience and felt very bad about the fact that he would gamble all night long and then go back to the courts and pursue his day job. He would go with prostitutes at any opportunity and then go home and confess to his poor wife, who was astonishingly, astonishingly forgiving of him. They had a great relationship despite his numerous infidelities. But what was interesting about Boswell is that he not only has this two sides to him, but that he became one of the greatest writers Scotland has known. He became friends with Samuel Johnson, the great lexicographer when he was in London, and he travelled with him. He brought him up to Scotland. He wrote a journal of their travels together through the Highlands. And because of this journal, a lot of people began to think that maybe Scotland wasn't so bad after all and was worth visiting. It wasn't quite as savage as people had expected it to be. But he also wrote Samuel Johnson's biography, and that in his own lifetime was a great success and it was a very original biography. But even better, in my opinion, are his journals, which weren't published in his lifetime. And they are so frank and they are so honest about what he was like. And you read these journals and you just follow him from one appalling act of dissolution to another. And then his terrible pangs of conscience and his promises to do better. And in the same sentence he'll say, "But I don't know how long this promise will hold." So he's just a fabulous character who sort of epitomises 18th century Edinburgh, but also was one of the great literary figures of the century. Is there anywhere a visitor can go to get a sense of Bozwell? Does this house survive or is there anything to see? No, not in that sense that I know of. I might not be correct there. But if you were to go to any of the bars near the law courts on the High Street, you would find lawyers at the bar, you know, possibly longer than they ought to be. And if you go into the National Library of Scotland, you can read or the Central Library in Edinburgh. You can read his books and just get a real sense of him. Well, you've already created a very vivid picture of Edinburgh's past and mentioned several places that people will want to visit to get a sense of that history. I'd like to ask you to pick just five places for listeners to visit today, each of which speaks to an aspect of the city's history. Well, one of my favourite of these is what's known as the Flood and Wall. And this, if you know your Scottish history, there was a terrible battle in 1513 when James IV, who had all the makings of a great Renaissance king, decided to fight a battle with the English just over the Scottish border in England. And despite having the better strategic position, he was absolutely slaughtered. He died on the field, as did they think, about 10,000 of Scotland's aristocracy, nobility, and, you know, finest fighting men. It was a devastating day for Scotland. And some people say that we've never psychologically quite recovered from this completely unnecessary battle and defeat. Within hours of the news of the battle reaching Edinburgh, they began to build what's known as the Flood and Wall because they felt that the English would then march north and take Edinburgh and destroy Edinburgh. They managed actually to escape that fate. But this Flood and Wall, which circled the entire city, which of course was very small, can still be seen in a couple of places. One of them off the grass market, which is in the old town, and I would say is worth visiting for its own sake, but the Flood and Wall rises there still. And in an area called the Pleasants, you can still see it. So you own a few yards of this very high wall, but you get an idea from this, not only of just what the medieval city might have looked like, but of how scared Scotland was of English reprisals. The next place I would choose, a personal favourite, is the Museum of Childhood, again on the Royal Mile. Many of the sites that you must visit in Edinburgh are on the Royal Mile and off the Royal Mile, which is why it's an incredibly difficult place to walk along the pavements, particularly during the height of the tourist season, which is about 11 months out of 12, I should say. The Museum of Childhood, which has been described as the noisiest museum in the world, is dedicated to that part of the population that you often overlook. Children are so much a part of the history of any city. But in Edinburgh, where this museum is located is also where some of the poorest children in the city lived. And you do get a catch of glimpse of these children of what's known as the Canon Gate in that area and how they lived and how they scrambled just to have any kind of existence. That is pretty heartbreaking. But what else this museum shows you are how the wealthier children lived and what kind of toys they had, what kind of games they played. And there's a lovely wooden sledge for two kids, which would still be very useful these days. Any of my grandson would absolutely love getting his hands on that. There's a little steif teddy bear, which was brought in the final Kindertransport out of Germany in 1939. There are beautiful dolls with these, it wasn't quite porcelain, but it was similar, very fragile faces and all their clothes. And also some of the shoes and the costumes that children would wear during this era. And it brings childhood right up until relatively recent decades as well. So it's not purely far gone history. So I think this is a wonderful place. And as with many of the museums in Scotland and in Edinburgh, it is free. Moving to a slightly more squeamish making place. And I'm not entirely sure I have the stomach to stay here very long. It's called Surgeon's Hall and it's just up the bridges. Again, it's a museum, but it taps into Edinburgh's very strong tradition of medical excellence and medical experimentation. So in this museum, you have exhibits of ghastly looking bits of human anatomy pickled in jars and just looking truly revolting. So as I say, you do need to have a strong stomach to go around here, but there is also a darker side to Edinburgh's medical story. Because although it was a pioneer in a lot of fantastic developments in medicine, it had the side of when people were starting to do dissections, they would get bodies of people who had died. But there was one particular anatomist called Robert Knox who didn't really wait for people to die. He got his bodies from a pair of reprobates and that's a very mild word for what they were like called Burke and Hare, who actually murdered people in order to provide him with bodies for dissection. Burke and Hare were finally caught and executed. This was 1829 and in this museum, you will find a pocketbook made from Burke's skin. After he was publicly dissected, they then used his skin to turn into a pocketbook, which is absolutely ghastly but completely riveting at the same time. One place that lots of people talk about loving is called Mary King's Close. And this is a fantastic remnant of the old city. As I maybe described, I don't know if I described it very clearly, but the royal mile had high, high stone tenements on either side of it. In the original medieval times, these would have been wooden and they were built higher and higher. But by the 17th century, they were made of stone, much more fire resistant. And Mary King's Close is a remnant of a 17th century tenement and the streets around it which were built over when they built what is now the city chambers. You can go underground to see this remnant of old Edinburgh. It's very spooky, very claustrophobic. Fantastic if you want to just get an atmosphere of the past and frighten yourself slightly. There are rumours that it's haunted. Of course, there's rumours that it's haunted. There are rumours that many murders were committed here and I think in one of Ian Rankin's novels is conveniently used as a location. But this is exceptional. There are not many places where you can go below ground and see the past like this. I know I've chosen a lot of museums and I'm going to choose another one and I do hope that's okay. But there's the Writers Museum also off the Royal Mile in a place called Mackers Court. And this is a museum to the three towering literary figures who all gravitated around Edinburgh. Walter Scott, Robert Burns and perhaps my favourite, Robert Louis Stevenson. And this museum tells you about their lives and also has artefacts from their lives. And Robert Louis Stevenson, who is fantastically famous for his novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In this museum, there is a wardrobe that was in Robert Louis Stevenson's house, which was made by the cabinet maker Deacon Brody, who was a very respectable cabinet maker and locksmith by day. And by night, he used his skills as a locksmith and the fact that he had access to keys to commit some appalling heists. You've made himself very, very rich from doing this, but of course in the end, he was caught. And he really is thought to be the inspiration for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and this idea of the two Edinburgh's, which have already mentioned, the respectable and the extremely dodgy. And so this museum gives you an idea of the three towering figures and their contribution to Scottish literary life. There are some who would say that J.K. Rowling is actually another literary towering figure and the streets of Edinburgh are filled with people following tours of the Harry Potter creator, where she wrote, where she found the names and the graveyard for some of her characters and so on. And my granddaughter once went on one of these tours and frequently corrected the guide because she could do mastermind on Harry Potter, as probably could most eight-year-olds. Hopefully we've enticed listeners to visit Edinburgh. While they're there, what typical food or drink should they try and where's the best place to sample it? You see, I would say that's Leith, which is the port of Edinburgh and doesn't see itself as a suburb, which many guidebooks describe it as. Leith is a very proud, independent part of the city, a separate city, a separate town originally. And that is filled with bars and restaurants and lots of atmosphere. There are various little villages, if you like, within Edinburgh. Another very good area to go is Stockbridge, one of my favourites too. And there you will just find lovely bars, because Scotland has a great in inverted commas history of drinking, sometimes a serious problem with drinking, but part of the pleasure of being in Edinburgh is to sit underneath a beautiful glittering gantry with all the different whiskeys and the different gins and these are drinks that Scotland does very well. Edinburgh was built on brewing as well, so there's a huge range of different kind of beers you can find anywhere. If I had to pick a place to go for a drink in the centre of Edinburgh, it would probably be the Café Royal, which is at the east end of Princess Street near Register House, which has a beautiful, beautiful gantry and lovely lights, which just give a sort of Victorian mellow colour to the whole place, and it just goes like a fare. In terms of eating, don't believe anybody who says that Scots eat deep fried Mars bars. That is just an abomination. I won't going to tell you where you can get these, just for your own good. But one of my favourite restaurants is called Café Saint Honoury, and it's in the new town off a cobbled street called Thistle Street, just off that. And what it does really well is, firstly, it sort of harks back to the old alliance between Scotland and France. There's a huge long tradition in Scotland of being connected to France politically and culturally, and Café Saint Honoury takes great Scottish produce on its menu. It tells you which farm different meats will come from, different vegetables come from, great Scottish fish. But it also has a really relaxed, almost Parisian atmosphere, and I have to say, if you're wanting a special night out, I would go to Café Saint Honoury. Wonderful. And for those visitors who will obviously seek out those places to eat and drink, is there another tip you could share? The number 23 bus is your guide to Edinburgh, basically. This is a bus that runs through the new town and across the old town, and goes past just about everywhere that's worth visiting in Edinburgh. So it starts near the sea in the wealthy suburb of Trinity, and it takes you past the Royal Botanic Gardens, which is really a haven if you want to get away from the bustle of the city. Absolutely splendid botanical gardens. It takes you past the great National Portrait Gallery and the National Museums on the Mound, which is the steep hill that joins the new town to the old town. It takes you past the National Museum and Chamber Street on and on and on. So it's terminus, which is within jumping distance of the Pentland Hills. So if you're bored, or if it's really wet and cold, and you just want to get a glimpse of the city and where you might go and visit next, it's on the number 23. It doesn't cost very much, and it's just great fun to do that for a couple of hours. Terrific. What's the one really unmissable experience every visitor to Edinburgh should have? I can't help but say it has to be visiting Edinburgh Castle. As I said earlier, you see it as soon as you arrive in the city, and it is just an spectacular place. You need virtually a day in which to visit it. You go into what's like a little walled town, go through a very narrow sort of, almost like a, well, it would have had a pork callus, but it's a very narrow entrance to it. And then you just have all these different buildings from different eras. You have this spectacular view over Scotland and towards Fife, the Firth of Forth, and there's so much history in there, and it's so well told. At one o'clock, or just a minute to one o'clock, because they fire a gun at one o'clock, and people of Edinburgh are completely used to this, but visitors jump and they spill their coffee and they trip and stumble. So just be aware that there'll be a huge blast from the castle at about one o'clock every afternoon. Could you give us one other surprising fact about the city that Liznes won't have heard before? I will, and something that I only heard recently. I mean, possibly everybody else in Edinburgh knows this fact, but I didn't. And Edinburgh is built on various hills, and you often find yourself plowing your way uphill, puffing away, or in the icy weather, slithering down hills. But the hill that I've mentioned, called the Mount, which connects the Newtown to the Oldtown, isn't actually a hill at all. This is a pile of rubbish and earth created when they built the Newtown. And so what you're actually going over is probably a huge amount of archaeological evidence from millennia past, which of course now is under your feet tarmacked over, and you will never know. So this was a completely unnecessary hill, you might say. And that fact just kind of fascinates me. We don't need more hills in Edinburgh. Absolutely. Now, you've talked about the festivals, the Fringe Festival and the main festival, which a lot of listeners will be keen to go to. But of course, another time of year, which is very eventful in Edinburgh, is Hogmer Day, the celebration of New Year. Could you give a piece of advice for visitors who are planning to come to Edinburgh for Hogmer Day? Well, pack a really thick coat and jumper, scarf, gloves and so on. Definitely hats with ear flaps. It can be extraordinarily cold in the New Year in Scotland. And you will spend some of it outdoors, obviously, particularly if you want to bring in the New Year with the bells at 12 o'clock, as they say. There are the official celebrations in Princess Street Gardens with all the fireworks. But if you're not taking part in that, go to the Tron Kirk on the Royal Mile just in time for the bells and you'll find yourself hugging complete strangers from the other side of the world and ushering in the New Year. But I think it's such an entertaining and enjoyable time of the year. And there's so much Shrouda Viva about it, which you really need when it's so dark and cold. But talking of cold, my other recommendation for those who are completely off their heads is to join in what they call the Looney Dook on January the 1st. This was, I think, designed originally as a way to get over your hangover. And what it is is just to go sea bathing on January the 1st. I get dressed up to do this in fancy dress. They just plunge into the water. They seem to be having a really good time. And where to do this, the best place to do this, I would say, is one of Edinburgh's loveliest suburbs called Portobello. You just get, I can give you a bus recommendation, get the number 26 bus from the centre of Edinburgh to Portobello. It's worth doing any time of year. It's a lovely little town in itself with cafes and restaurants, really nice shops. But its prime attraction and has been since the 1800s is its fabulous long promenade and beach. And for those mad enough to do it, the sea awaits you. Fabulous. Well, thank you, Rosemary. It's great to get a richer understanding of Edinburgh's heritage. So thank you for sharing those insights. Rosemary's latest book is Homecoming, the Scottish Years of Mary, Queen of Scots, published by Berlin and available now. Thanks for listening.