There is no shortage of books about Edinburgh – I wrote one myself some fifteen years ago – and there will be many more, for the beauty, character and contradictions of the city will always attract writers. All that matters is that the book should be a good one, and Michael Fry’s new history of the city is certainly that.

He covers the whole span of its history, eclectically rather than exhaustively, writing about those aspects of Edinburgh that most interest him, neglecting those that don’t – sport, for instance. He devotes only a couple of banal pages to the Edinburgh Festival, in which he perpetuates the myth