Edinburgh Changes the World.

Edinburgh, 'Scotias Darling,' sits high and mighty upon the castle rock, a symbol of strength and power if ever there was one.  Like so many symbols it is of course untrue.  Not only in the last hundred years has such an edifice become useless is major wars it was also found to be ineffective in holding back the forces of 'Bonny Prince Charlie' back in 1745.  That was the year Charles attempted, rather badly to retake the throne of Scotland and England for his father James.  This Jacobite rebellion went as successfully as the others with Charlie eventually taken over the seas to Skye dressed as a woman and rowed there by another, Flora MacDonald.  This conflict, such as it was, the last proper British 'civil war' ended badly but left a deep scar on Edinburgh and the rest of Scotland.
In 1707 the parliament was stolen by deceit and removed to Westminster, Scotland's few Members of that house to small in number and for the most part forced to the sidelines, could do little there.  Edinburgh, deprived of parliament and the hangers on that followed in its wake, died a death and economic collapse was real for many years.
Following the rebellion various attempts are stimulating the city were aroused with many becoming very strongly attached to London.  Even the Kirk was divided with many younger men looking south for reasons of their own and many others looking south and also to France and the so called 'age of reason.'  Men such as David Hume wished to remove power from the Kirk, a power it had wielded since the reformation, and replace this with reason, in his case of course 'his reason.'  Many went along with him, few who attended church then as in many other years were actually believers, most just stayed out of trouble, and a great many of the 'educated' wished to investigate 'reason.'  Hume went so far as to try to teach Edinburgh people to speak 'English' so as to improve their chances in the world.  Not all went along with this as a walk down the High Street today would prove.  Then came Adam Smith with his fancy ideals of trade.  These ideas appealed to Margaret Thatcher even if she missed out his bit about caring for the weak in society.  It appears he wished to encourage trade but allow the cash to flow around so the poor were not left behind.  Margaret heard the bit about profit but not the bit about the poor, 'trickle down theory' was just another way of keeping all the cash to themselves, as today's Conservative cabinet prove. 
Edinburgh did take advantage of what was n offer and men like George Drummond made the most of things.  The 'New Town' was laid out, the 'Mound' created as a way of transport there and back, the 'Bridges' erected and the 'Nor Loch' drained, thus the Edinburgh we know came into being even if the progress was slow and the rich preferred to live to the south of the city and not the north.
This book by James Buchan was published in 2004, I wish I had read it at school!  I learned things, many things, about Edinburgh I did not know.  How ignorant I was of the growth of the city and the people behind it.  How stupid of schools not to teach so much more about our city.  Much was taught, but there again the class I was in contained many who found spelling 'Edinburgh' pretty difficult so maybe it is understandable.  
This was a good book, with insights into people and events I knew not.  Many things I understood and those living there would comprehend the place much better with reading this book.  It must be said some of the philosophical ideas were not just boring but a weariness to read, but that goes with the study I suppose.  This was one of those books you just cannot put down, so I didn't.

   
Sometimes we have young folks studying for appropriate degrees in museum studies, their hope being to end up running the British Museum or some such.  I see it as my duty to ensure they realise that such exciting work comes with sitting at a computer entering details hour after hour, precision being a must and only after that actually setting out museums, creating exhibitions and meeting the public can be contemplated.  Another aspect is kids work.  Yesterday morn I spent a wonderfully exciting time preparing these cut outs for the kids.  Quite what they do with them I did not ask, I just went ahead while in between searching the web for info for the lass who will be going to a local school soon.  Two of us eventually sat then chopping things up, searching the web, weaving occurred in Egypt at least 500 BC did you know?  And all the time we sat there people came in to disturb us.  Some to enter there names for events, some to bring in Christmas raffle tickets before we knew they had gone out, one couple to bring the granddaughter to see the museum.  And the phone kept ringing also.  We were so busy time to go home came before I knew it.   It was a good day mind.