Alistair Moffat’s A New History of Edinburgh could best be described as a quixotically compelling, if not always satisfying, read. A prolific writer with a well-known background in television, the Edinburgh Fringe, and the Borders Book Festival, his literary fluency and irrepressible enthusiasm for, on the whole, historic subjects close to his heart, are replete in a litany of previous publications.

Mr Moffat unquestionably has ‘the gift of the pen’ and immediately engages us with the sort of opening narrative which tends to induce queasiness in many academic historians. “Nine centuries ago, a scribe sat down at his writing board on a summer’s day and with a knife sharpened a quill into a nib. Having dipped it into ink made with oak gall, he began to write history.”

This is an example of what was once termed a ‘Prebbleism’, after the style of popular historian John Prebble, who invented the thoughts of many of his characters. One suspects that Mr Prebble’s true failing was that his rip-roaring bestsellers were coining it in while unforgiving dry-stick academics largely writing for each other weren’t much appreciated by the book-buying public.

In any event, ‘Prebbleisms’ were, and presumably still are, regarded as deeply unscholarly by many evidence-led historians, even though ‘Prebbleist’ writers such as Nigel Tranter, Jean Plaidy, and Elizabeth Kyle introduced a much broader readership to the joys of history than most academics ever did, with a few notable professorial exceptions such as Tom Devine.

Moffat at his chronicling best comes through in chapter 3, though given that the book is really a disparate collection of essays rather than a sequential whole we could question whether chapter headings were strictly necessary. The Pioneers, however, is in a class of its own, in that it draws upon discoveries made at Echline, South Queensferry, which accompanied the construction of the Queensferry Crossing. This may be far from the city, though it was customary in the 19th century to describe South Queensferry as ‘Edinburgh Forward’.

What emerges is that Edinburgh, far from being a mere 900 years old – the marketing pretext for the publication of both books – is actually more than 9,000 years old, given that the site of a house in the Echline excavation dated to 8000 BC, making it around twice as old as the great Pyramid at Giza! Alistair Moffat writes about this archaeological discovery with a descriptive passion which builds the reader’s expectations. But to what end?

There follows a rag-bag of tales vaguely reminiscent of the Victorian writer James Ballantine’s Gaberlunzie’s Wallet, if none the less readable for that. Indeed the fifty or so chapters, mostly bite sized, fairly rattle along and keep the narrative lively. Yet the question arises as to whether this really is a comprehensive history at all in the sense that, say, Michael Fry’s 2009 Edinburgh: A History of the City or David Daiches 1978 Edinburgh both set out to be.

If the gaps are addressed, it certainly misses the mark as an all-encompassing civic history, with little more than a few perfunctory references to Edinburgh University’s destructive activities in the historic Southside, the council estate peripheral sprawl of the 20th century, or the march of MacTaggart and Meikle bungalowland in the inter-war period – or indeed such latter-day greenbelt gobbling encroachments such as Shawfair and The Gyle. We are kept informed on such eminently Victorian middle class excursions as Morningside and Merchiston, on the other hand.

Edinburgh’s many histories tend to be socially sanitised, an understandable temptation in light of all those architectural, cultural, and topographical glories which cry out to be celebrated. Best look to fiction for the ‘dark side’ – Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels, James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Bruce Marshall’s The Black Oxen, Muriel Spark’s Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde (ostensibly set in London, but palpably Edinburgh), and Scott’s Heart of Midlothian, to name but a few.

Mr Moffat’s gaps in coverage and a leaning towards the more prestigious post codes was perhaps inevitable, given the architectural and intellectual glories of the enlightenment, but factual errors are another matter. In his New History the old canard that David Hume was an atheist persists – he wasn’t. A sceptical agnostic is something else altogether.

We are also told that Anthony Van Dyck painted royal portraits which were hung along the Royal Mile processional route for the visit of Charles 1st. We should be so lucky. That artist was George Jamieson, to some ‘the Scottish Van Dyck’. The great Flemish artist certainly painted many portraits of Charles and his family, but there is no evidence that any of them ornamented the streets of Edinburgh. A minor solecism, perhaps, but urban myths are never history, new or otherwise.

Alan Taylor’s Edinburgh: The Autobiography is another kind of creature altogether. As an editor, reviewer, and one time librarian, Mr Taylor excels as an anthologiser of the works of others. Yet he can, at a push, turn out a lapidary sentence of his own, as evidenced by his introductory storytelling romp based on a meeting with poet Norman McCaig in The Abbotsford pub.

Editors are not authors, and rarely feature in the spotlight, a case in point being Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman. The UK edition credits Alan Taylor as editor on its cover, where the US edition displaces him with ‘Introduction by Emma Thompson’ who was, admittedly, one of the actor’s closest friends. A point is made, however: editors, no matter how talented, should never expect a high billing.

Despite that, Mr Taylor has more than enough creative chutzpah to spread out a veritable feast of other people’s snippets. His selections begin in 600 AD, but for those with long memories the twentieth century gems are positively dazzling. Paul Henderson Scott on the frenetic campaign to save the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 1994 and George Rosie on the 1960s campaign against That Bloody Ring Road, preserve many aspects of a rumbustious history which deserves to be better known. Such protests go back a long way in this city which has long demanded the loyalties and affections of its inhabitants.

It isn’t always the locals to whom we owe a debt in the defence of Edinburgh’s dignity, however. The Scottish capital commands a remarkable level of universal affection – others in this exclusive club include Venice, Barcelona, Paris, and St Petersburg. You certainly don’t have to be an Edinburgher to love the place. “The Scots think of it as their capital” states Alexander McCall Smith “they’re too possessive, Edinburgh belongs to the world”. His view must be taken seriously – after all Alistair Moffat’s book is dedicated to him, while Alan Taylor’s receives his generous puff – “No city could hope for a better biographer.”

A particularly well informed outsider’s take in Taylor’s selection is proffered by Guardian architecture correspondent, Oliver Wainwright. Blot on the Landscape excoriates the uber-infamous ‘Golden Turd’ hotel in the so-called St James Quarter. Mr Wainwright launches into his subject with gusto. “This shimmering pile is evidence that despite all the World Heritage site protections, conservation group campaigns, and lengthy planning negotiations, shit still happens.”

The combination of anger and humour makes for a heady mix, for all that it is an aesthetic savaging, rather than a comment on the rancid moral corruption at the heart of a project backed by an American pension fund which had around a trillion dollars under management, yet which somehow received a £61.4 million subsidy from the Scottish public purse, while the obligatory social housing proportion of the residential development was relocated to a post-industrial site outside the city centre, leaving St James’s ‘New Eidyn’ as an exclusive preserve which could be sold to 152 global investors at a Singapore property fair in October 2020. Social cleansing would seem to be as virulent as ever in fair Edina.

The prize bauble in Mr Taylor’s jewel casket as far as your scrivener is concerned is Tears in George Square, a 1980 article by journalist, theatre reviewer, and That was the Week that Was presenter Bernard Levin. The tears, he confessed, “are kept a bay by the adrenalin of rage at what has been done to this beautiful oasis of peace and harmony – why are universities such abominable barbarians?”

Your scrivener’s role as a contrarian in this urban drama has now been neatly book-ended. Mr Wainwright honours him with a mention as “one who has campaigned against inappropriate development the city for years”. Indeed so! In Edinburgh, by David Daiches he is referenced for “his contribution to an indignant study entitled The Unmaking of Edinburgh”. That was as recently as 1978. It seems some people just can’t change.

David J Black’s play, Nancy’s Philosopher, which concerns the controversial relationship between David Hume and an upper class lady half his age, will be staged at the Royal Scots Club, August 5th - 19th.

Edinburgh: A New History by Alistair Moffat. Published by Birlinn, 224pp, £14.99.
Edinburgh: The Autobiography by Alan Taylor. Published by Birlinn, 368pp, £20.