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Auld Reekie : An Edinburgh Anthology
Ralph Lownie
Alexander McCall Smith
Edinburgh is truly a city of names and by-names. Even her own hasn’t escaped variation. Dunedin!
Edina!! The Athens of the North!!! All these are more than a bit bookish. But the country folk called her
‘Auld Reekie’; and though this name is based on the same characteristic that gets London dubbed ‘The
Smoke’, you can’t help thinking it’s more affectionate.
James Ritchie, The Singing Street (1964)
For centuries Edinburgh, ‘the most beautiful city in Europe’ according to John Betjeman, has inspired
affection, admiration and awe from both natives and visitors alike.
For his absorbing anthology, Ralph Lownie has cast his net far and wide, trawling through a myriad
of speeches, memoirs, letters, poetry, novels, journals, lectures and guides. Spanning five hundred
years of the city’s history, from the Municipal Proclamation after the Battle of Flodden to the novels of
lan Rankin, names as celebrated as Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson stand alongside less
familiar visitors such as the Chinese writer Chiang Yee.
This book will be treasured by all those who love the city of Edinburgh and the hundreds of
thousands of visitors drawn every year to Auld Reekie, now in the full flood of a social, political and
cultural renaissance which might tempt some, these days, to regard Athens as the ‘Edinburgh of the
South’.
Ralph Lownie was born in Edinburgh in 1924 and was educated there at George Watson’s and
Edinburgh University. He is a Writer to the Signet and a member of the Faculty of Advocates. This, at
the age of eighty, is his first book.
Reviews
| ‘. . . an anthology of telling, pithy, evocative reflections on the city's chequered history and life, on its
village entrails, its tribulations, its towns old and new - where famous visitors (Thackeray, Burns,
Carnegie and Wordsworth) left their calling-card-quotations in prose and verse - is a kind of ticker-tape of
Edinburgh incarnate over five centuries. From the scholarly to the vernacular to the heretofore unpublished,
torchbeams of scrutiny mingle with echoes in different accents.’ | Scotsman |
| ‘Lownie's pride and pleasure in Auld Reekie is evident. This is a book to delight in.’ | Allan Massie, Sunday Times |
| ‘A fine book it is too, full of facts, figures and fancies about the city to which he has given his heart.
It is the easiest thing in the world to produce an Edinburgh anthology; more difficult to make it fresh
and vibrant. Mr Lownie succeeds in spades, with the famously familiar enlivened by the interestingly obscure . . .
you would go far to find a fresher and more fascinating celebration of one of God's great cities.’ | Critic's Choice, Scottish Daily Mail |
| ‘...they (the city fathers) would have been hard put to match the style and grace and eye for
the unusual of this personal selection.’ | Herald |
| ‘. . . a rich compilation of writings on the city drawn from novels, letters, lectures, poetry and a
variety of other sources. The compiler...could not have devised a finer tribute to his native city . . .
This is a treasure of a book and I shall dip into it often.’ | Maurice Fleming, Scots Magazine |
| ‘This is a wonderful collection of stories, letters and tales all pertinent to Edinburgh past and present!
It's a collection that will be a fascinating journey for all those who know a lot or a little about our
Capital city. Ideal as a gift, it will keep the reader entranced for hours. I defy anyone not to learn
from this treasure!’ | Forth 2 |
| ‘. . . Auld Reekie has attracted fulsome praise from countless authors as Ralph Lownie
demonstrates in his fine anthology of writings about the city…This is a lovingly gathered
collection by an octogenarian who has loved the city . . .’ | Scottish Life |
| ‘A fascinating anthology of articles, memoirs, letters, poems, speeches and guides awaits
those who open the pages of Ralph Lownie’s debut book…The sheer variety of entries means that
it is a book to be put down and lifted up again many times, with always something new to amuse.’ | Lothian Life |
| ‘. . . a rich and diverting anthology of the city, embracing hundreds of years and a variety of contributors . . .’ | Daily Mail |
| ‘This book will be treasured by all those who love the city of Edinburgh and the hundreds of
thousands of visitors drawn every year to Auld Reekie . . . ’ | Scots Heritage |
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