A Literary Geography Scrapbook

"The corners of a city, she thought, are where the sense of place was strongest. The world saw the official Edinburgh, the elegant Georgian squares, the lines of fluttering flags in Princes Street Gardens, the bands and the spectacles. It did not see the back greens, the closes, the streets where people led ordinary lives. It was possible, she reminded herself, to love both equally - the Scotland of the romantic tourist posters and this unadorned, workaday Scotland - and she was, in fact, fond of them both and not ashamed, as some were, of the romanticised vision. Myth could be as sustaining as reality - sometimes even more so."

Alexander McCall Smith(2009) - "The Lost Art of Gratitude".