Reading Around the World: Edinburgh

Reading Around the World is a feature that combines my love of travelling with my love of reading. Each month I plan to spotlight either a city I have visited, or a city I plan to visit in the near future, and recommend some of my favourite books set there. After all even if you can’t visit these cities yourself the next best thing has to be reading about them and living the experience through the eyes of the characters.

Edinburgh was a city I visited on a whim, and when I say that I really mean it. My friend and I only ended up in Scotland because we were looking for cheap weekend getaways over Easter and Edinburgh was the cheapest. Edinburgh is a beautiful city; the winding cobblestone streets that connected to the Royal Mile reminded me of Prague, the history of Edinburgh Castle reminded me of the history of London’s Tower Hill, and the views from the top of Arthur’s Seat couldn’t be beaten. We also went on a day trip into the Highlands which was an incredible experience, even though the weather wasn’t great the sights we saw were breathtaking.

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I can’t talk about Scotland and not mention the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Hogwarts is supposedly located in the Scottish Highlands and while, unfortunately, I didn’t catch a glimpse of it during my day trip (I wouldn’t have come home if I had) one of the tours you can do of the Highlands offers you a chance to ride on the Hogwarts Express. That’s something I am definitely noting down for future reference.

Into the Dim by Janet B. Taylor is another book (I’ve only read the first so I can’t say if the rest of the series is the same) set in the Scottish Highlands. It’s a time travel story, but if that’s not your thing it’s worth picking up simply for how the Highlands are described by Hope as she explores them before travelling back to the twelfth century.

The third book in one of my all-time favourite series The Song Rising by Samantha Shannon also travels to Edinburgh. Granted it’s a dystopian version of the city, set in the near future after the past branched off in a different direction to what we’ve read in history books, but the wider history of the city is the same and Edinburgh Castle is still standing in The Song Rising.

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Have you ever been to Edinburgh before; what was your favourite part of the city to see and explore? Also what are some of the amazing books you’ve read set in Edinburgh, or Scotland, that you’d recommend? Let me know in the comments.