'A hugely readable and comprehensive review of this volatile period in the city's life ... He brings a natural storyteller's relish to his subject ... an utterly compelling and captivating work' -- Irvine Welsh, The Guardian 'Mr Buchan ... excels at the dramatic action ... he combines deft broad strokes with intricate details, shading in apparent dry subjects with innumerable and delightful anecdotes that bring the old city to life' -- Economist 'Mr Buchan has a clear writing style, a light touch and a irreverent sense of humour ... [he] makes difficult subjects accessible and, sometimes, poetic' -- Economist 'Buchan gives us a novelist's evocative account of the men involved and the squalid, violent, bigoted streets of Edinburgh...The book is a triumph of fact-based, imaginatively expressed writing.' -- Magnus Magnusson, New Statesman 'As Buchan says in this marvellous book, "there is no city like Edinburgh in all the world"' -- Ferdinand Mount, Sunday Times 'Buchan's confident and astringent study is based on an informed love of Scotland and its stories are told to excellent effect' -- Karl Miller, Telegraph 'Vigorous and entertaining' -- Paul Johnson, Sunday Telegraph 'There have been many books about "The Athens of the North", but none as authoritative as this' -- The Times 20040814 'Edinburgh ... laid the mental foundations for the modern world' -- Sunday Telegraph 20040808 'Edinburgh teems on these pages' -- Independent 20040808 'Buchan vigorously advances the argument announced in his title, and he writes intellectual history like the novelist he is' -- Independent 20040808 'He brings us the look and smell and feel of Scotland ... The book is a triumph of fact-based, imaginatively-expressed writing' -- Magnus Magnusson, New Statesman 20040808 'An entertaining intellectual history ... Pungently evoking the Old Town and the planning of the new, masterfully condensing the lives and works of such titans as David Hume and Adam Smith, coolly anatomising the bogus Gaelic epics of Ossian and the newfangled cult of sentiment, and watching half-amused, half-outraged, as Boswell and Johnson career through his pages, Buchan brilliantly tells a complex story' -- Guardian 20040828 'Buchan does a scholarly job of describing this transformation' -- Halifax Daily News 20040828

James Buchan is both a leading novelist and a major historian. He won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize, and his controversial philosophy of money, Frozen Desire, won the Duff Cooper Award.