Edinburgh Poetry Tours

04/08/2026

The Edinburgh Alphabet continues with O is for Outlander, Otway and Orphan.

According to outlanderlocations.com

"Bakehouse Close is the site of Carfax Close, home to Alexander Malcolm’s print shop. It is here that we see Claire reunited with Jamie after years of separation … More significantly perhaps, it is the location of the brothel where Jamie resides, directly opposite the print shop. Interestingly the building concerned was once a real brothel, known as The C**k and Trumpet."

This is Acheson House, built in 1633, when Charles I visited the city to be crowned king of Scotland. The Acheson family crest is a c**k and trumpet, hences the brothel's name.

On a wall panel are images of pages from Ranger's Impartial List of the Ladies of Pleasure in Edinburgh (1775). It was written by James Tytler, a minister's son, best known for editing the 2nd edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. One of the pages reproduced features a description of women's inconstancy, taken from The Orphan by Thomas Otway (1680), a play successful in its time and long afterwards. In it twin brothers Castalio and Polydore both love Monimia. In the 'intolerable vanity!' speech Polydore addresses Monimia; below, she replies.

Monimia: Indeed, my lord,
I own my sex's follies; I have 'em all;
And, to avoid its fault, must fly from you.
Therefore, believe me, could you raise me high
As most fantastic woman's wish could reach,
And lay all nature's riches at my feet;
I'd rather run a savage in the woods,
Amongst brute beasts, grow wrinkled and deform'd,
"As wildness and most rude neglect could make me,"
So I might still enjoy my honour safe
From the destroying wiles of faithless men.

A is for the Adam Dome
B is for Bookshelf
C is for Connolly, & Cowgate
D is for Deacon Brodie
E is for Edinburgh etc
F is for Fringe
G is for Gododdin
H is for Hedrich
I is for Iain Crichton Smith
J is for Jacob's Ladder
K is for Kirk, Thomas
L is for Lepel, Benhard von
M is for Maps
N is for Newhaven
O is for Outlander, Otway & Orphan
P is for …

03/08/2026

Lapidus Scotland Newsletter, August 2026, featuring the Budding Writers anthology, the Creatively Minded and Green report, and new editor Kathryn Koromilas-

We asked those who took part in May’s Budding Writers sessions – 20 daily online writing workshops, each lasting an hour, and each led by a different facilitator – to send us some of the work they produced. We welcomed first drafts and works-in-progress, as examples of what came out of the se...

02/08/2026

The Edinburgh Alphabet reaches N is for Newhaven, a former fishing village north of the city centre, between Leith and Granton.

The harbour, an unusually immobile tern, sea campion, a mosaic, Inchkeith, the bridges.

A is for the Adam Dome
B is for Bookshelf
C is for Connolly, & Cowgate
D is for Deacon Brodie
E is for Edinburgh etc
F is for Fringe
G is for Gododdin
H is for Hedrich
I is for Iain Crichton Smith
J is for Jacob's Ladder
K is for Kirk, Thomas
L is for Lepel, Benhard von
M is for Maps
N is for Newhaven
O is for …

31/07/2026

The Edinburgh Alphabet reaches the letter M, which is for Maps.

These one date, respectively, from 1630, 1742, 1764 and 1836.

The first presents an orderly town amid orderly fields, and a version of the name I haven't seen elsewhere – Edenbruck. I can't quite work out what's going with the swords, one of which seems to be going into the fellow's mouth.

The second shows the density of the housing either side of the Lawnmarket and High Street, though it's not far to the open spaces around Greyfriars Kirk and Heriot's Hospital, where there's a 'Bowling Green'.

The third has the classic Old Town 'fish skelton' shape, with the bones of the closes running off the spine of the Royal Mile.

By the time of the fourth the grid of the New Town has spread over the land to the north, and the Nor Loch has become Princes St Gardens.

A is for the Adam Dome
B is for Bookshelf
C is for Connolly, & Cowgate
D is for Deacon Brodie
E is for Edinburgh etc
F is for Fringe
G is for Gododdin
H is for Hedrich
I is for Iain Crichton Smith
J is for Jacob's Ladder
K is for Kirk, Thomas
L is for Lepel, Benhard von
M is for Maps
N is for …

28/07/2026

The ongoing alphabet… L is for Lepel, Bernhard von. He accompanied Theodor Fontane on his journey to Scotland in 1858, which resulted in the travel book Jenseits des Tweeds (Beyond the Tweed) (1860). The English edition pictured is a 1998 reprint of Brian Battershaw's 1965 translation, and features drawings made by von Lepel.

Fontane, a Prussian, had been working in Scotland as a journalist. He knew Scotland through its ballads, some of which he had translated into German, and especially through the novels of Scott.

After visiting Edinburgh, the pair went north to Stirling, Loch Katrine, Perth and Inverness, visiting nearby Culldoen Moor, then went down the Caledonian Canal to Oban and across the sea to Staffa and Iona. After returning to Edinburgh, they visited Loch Leven (for its associations with Mary Stuart), Melrose Abbey and, finally, Abbotsford.

A is for the Adam Dome
B is for Bookshelf
C is for Connolly, & Cowgate
D is for Deacon Brodie
E is for Edinburgh etc
F is for Fringe
G is for Gododdin
H is for Hedrich
I is for Iain Crichton Smith
J is for Jacob's Ladder
K is for Kirk, Thomas
L is for Lepel, Benhard von
M is for …

26/07/2026

The alphabet continues with K is for Kirk. Not the institution, but Thomas Kirk, a Yorkshireman who kept a journal of a tour of Scotland made 1677.

It's May 29th, and the 'holiday heroes' are celebrating the anniversary of Charles II's restoration. All loud, dangerous and wild. And then, at the end of it all, washing yourself in wine so the bed doesn't catch fire…

'The streets were almost melted with bonfires, and full of tradesmen and apprentices, every one straightly imprisoned in stiff new clothes and so feathered with ribbons, that they would have flown like birds of paradise, had they not been fast tied to cold iron, a musket and sword to secure them … after we had drunk as much as we thought would secure us from the flame, we ventured to run the gauntlet of fire, swords, pikes and guns … we washed ourselves with wine, for fear some sparks should remain to destroy, and ventured to bed… '

'Kirk was a country gentleman, a Justice of the Peace, a staunch Tory, and of a sceptical turn on points of religion. From Kirk's own journal we also gather he was something of a toper, and generally a person of easy morals.'

This is from the Introduction to Tours of Scotland (1892), which gives Kirk's account along with another from a few years later by his friend Ralph Thoresby, both of which first appeared in print in 1830.

(The photo of the extract shows it in the anthology In Praise of Edinburgh, ed. Rosalind Masson, 1912.)

A is for the Adam Dome
B is for Bookshelf
C is for Connolly, & Cowgate
D is for Deacon Brodie
E is for Edinburgh etc
F is for Fringe
G is for Gododdin
H is for Hedrich
I is for Iain Crichton Smith
J is for Jacob's Ladder
K is for Kirk, Thomas
L is for …

21/07/2026

The alphabet continues… J is for Jacob's Ladder, running up steeply from Calton Road and the gloom of an overhead railway bridge to the wider vistas of Regent Road. The hand mosaic is right at the top; I don't know why, or what it signifies.

A is for the Adam Dome
B is for Bookshelf
C is for Connolly, & Cowgate
D is for Deacon Brodie
E is for Edinburgh etc
F is for Fringe
G is for Gododdin
H is for Hedrich
I is for Iain Crichton Smith
J is for Jacob's Ladder
K is for …

19/07/2026

The alphabet continues with I is for Iain Crichton Smith (1928-1998). Born in Glasgow, and raised on the Isle of Lewis, after studies in Aberdeen he spent most of his adult life in Argyll, writing in Gaelic and English. Nonetheless he wrote about Edinburgh, not always flatteringly, and his work is built into the Scottish Poetry Library by way of a prominent inscription.

Photos:
1) Iain Crichton Smith at the laying of the foundation stone for the new Scottish Poetry Library in 1997

2) An inscription in Makars Court:
Let our three-voiced country
Sing in a new world
– the opening lines of the poem 'The Beginning of a New Song', read at the opening of the Scottish parliament in 1999.

3) THIS HOUSE, THIS POEM… THIS FRESH HYPOTHESIS
Elizabeth Ogilvie's glass balustrade in the Scottish Poetry Library, with words taken from a sonnet by Iain Crichton Smith.

4) His poem 'Edinburgh' (1981):
'This city bothers me, it being so old,
so obviously noble and historical…
I think I ache for water, for the shine
of uncorrupted particularities…'

A is for the Adam Dome
B is for Bookshelf
C is for Connolly, & Cowgate
D is for Deacon Brodie
E is for Edinburgh etc
F is for Fringe
G is for Gododdin
H is for Hedrich
I is for Iain Crichton Smith
J is for …

18/07/2026

A summary of the first 8 letter posts in this year's Edinburgh alphabet, which I've been posting on instagram **kburnedinburgh and Facebook .

Back in 2017 I posted an A-Z of Edinburgh poetry. This summer I thought I’d do another, so in the run-up to this year’s Fringe poetry walks I’ve started posting on instagram and F…

17/07/2026

An Edinburgh alphabet… H is for Hedrich.

Franz Hedrich (1823-1895) was a Bohemian (in that he came from Prague, then part of Bohemia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire) writer, who having married an Edinburgh woman, Annie Barron, is buried in Greyfriars Churchyard.

If remembered at all today, it is for a scandal in 1889 and 1890, when he claimed to have been the true author of a series of popular novels from several decades earlier by his late friend Alfred Meissner (1822-1885).

Hedrich's claims, made in a small book issued by Meissner's former publishers, managed to tarnish Meissner's and ruin his own reputation.

As The Scotsman newspaper wrote, 'Experts and literary critics have turned their attention to the contents of this pamphlet and taken the writer's statements to pieces, and, having satisfied their minds that the claim is both a daring and worthless one, have once and for all repelled the wicked attempt to rob the dead of his fame and literary worth. To-day Hedrich stands condemned and discredited in the eyes of the world of letters.'

It's hard to know exactly to what extent Hedrich contributed, but the two men certainly collaborated on the works in question, without ever acknowledging this publicly.

A is for the Adam Dome
B is for Bookshelf
C is for Connolly, & Cowgate
D is for Deacon Brodie
E is for Edinburgh etc
F is for Fringe
G is for Gododdin
H is for Hedrich
I is for …