10 Scotland Street – the story of an Edinburgh home and its cast of booksellers, silk merchants, sailors, preachers, politicians, its stories of cholera and coincidence and its widespread connections over two centuries across the globe. 10 Scotland Street by Leslie Hills is published in paperback on 6 August, 2024. Read Leslie’s feature about how […]
Crime and politics in the early 18th century
Douglas Skelton found inspiration in the criminals and politics of the early 18th century, a time relatively unexplored in fiction, for his historical crime novels. He explains what it was about the period that drew him to set his Jonas Flint books then. When I began my adventure in historical fiction, following years of writing […]
Edinburgh’s New Town and the 200-year history of 10 Scotland Street
Leslie Hills looks back at what intrigued her about her house, and how it set her off on a decades-long search for the history of 10 Scotland Street in Edinburgh’s New Town — the subject of her newly-published book. When finally I paid off the mortgage on my home, number 10 Scotland Street, a Georgian […]
10 Scotland Street by Leslie Hills
10 Scotland Street – the story of an Edinburgh home and its cast of booksellers, silk merchants, sailors, preachers, politicians, cholera and coincidence and its widespread connections over two centuries across the globe. 10 Scotland Street by Leslie Hills is published on 1 December, 2023. With a foreword by Val McDermid, this is her first […]
The Honours of Scotland
On 5 July, 2023, King Charles and Queen Camilla will be in Scotland for a series of events to mark his coronation. At the high point he will be presented with the Honours of Scotland at a National Service of Thanksgiving and Dedication at St Giles’ Cathedral. The historian Maggie Craig looks back at the […]
George IV’s visit to Edinburgh in 1822
Exactly 200 years ago, on Thursday 15 August, 2022, George IV landed at Leith, near Edinburgh, for a three-week ‘jaunt’. Arriving, he was dressed in naval uniform, but displayed himself to the Scottish capital dressed in tartan, and it’s that image of his visit that has remained in popular imagination. To mark the bicentenary, Maggie […]
The Sign of the Devil by Oscar de Muriel
An ill-fated grave-robbery unearths a corpse with a most disturbing symbol on it. The very same sign is daubed in blood on the walls of Edinburgh’s lunatic asylum, on the night that one of the patients is murdered. The mark in question? The mark of the devil. The prime suspect: Amy McGray, the asylum’s most […]
The Fair Botanists by Sara Sheridan
It’s the summer of 1822 and Edinburgh is abuzz with rumours of King George IV’s impending visit. In botanical circles, however, a different kind of excitement has gripped the city. In the newly-installed Botanic Garden, the Agave Americana plant looks set to flower; an event that only occurs once every few decades. When newly-widowed Elizabeth […]