My Bones Will Keep

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Not all the place-names in this book will be found on any map of Scotland.

I hope that the Scottish National Trust will forgive me for restoring their beautiful gardens at Inverewe to private ownership.

My Bones Will Keep

Chapter 1

Edinburgh

‘…famous alike for its romantic history and the surpassing beauty of its natural situation.’

Muirhead’s Blue Guide to Scotland, 1949

‘…a penniless lass wi’ a lang pedigree.’

Old Saying (possibly Glaswegian)

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THE hotel overlooked West Princes Gardens. Laura was admiring the view from her bedroom window. Away to the right stood the Episcopal Church of St John, where Princes Street and Lothian Road made a right-angle. Beyond it, and a part of the Gardens, or so it appeared, was St Cuthbert’s; and here and there, although they were not readily identifiable from the hotel windows, were the statues erected to the memory of the faithful departed—the poet Allan Ramsay, the surgeon Sir James Simpson and the visionary who promoted the ragged schools, Doctor Thomas Guthrie.

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