…The names of the dead, so many dead, were written in big red books’ He was surprised at how beautiful it was inside. ‘He had a look in the building at the heart of the castle that housed the Scottish national war memorial. The story went that the citizens of edinburgh had been too mean to pay for twelve cannon shots for midday and so had settled for a gun at one o’clock.’ ‘A rustle of excitement preceded the One O’Clock Gun. ‘The castle was a brute of a building, all fairy-tale Scottish from below but once you were within its glowering walls it was dank and doom- laden’ – page 68 ‘The rain had in no way deterred the crowds – it had never occurred to him that Edinburgh was in the middle of ‘the festival’ and that there would be carnival hordes of people milling around as if the end of a war had just been declared.’ The Castle

‘As he pushed his way thorough the crowd he tried to orientate himself towards the castle’ – page 45 ‘When he stepped off the train in Waverley station yesterday, he had been expecting the 50 per cent of his genes that were Scottish to recognise their heritage.’ (All snippets below are taken directly from the book and are accompanied by page numbers for ease of reference) Welcome to Jackson Brodie’s Edinburgh

The setting during the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland is a great back drop, and the details of Scottish life made me smile at the memories of living in Edinburgh and attending the Fringe on many an occasion: So that’s exactly what I did and it turns out that Mr Brodie is a very interesting guide indeed. Then it got me thinking.What would it be like if Jackson Brodie were a tour guide? I mean if I could wander through the streets of Edinburgh accompanied by the great man himself. Well, having read ‘One Good Turn’ recently as preparation for attending the Edinburgh book festival where I will be attending one of Kate’s events, I smiled as I revisited a lot of the sights of Edinburgh featured in the book. Many of you will have read at least one book by Kate Atkinson – especially her Jackson Brodie series which has been a very successful television series too.

Jackson brodie series