Travel by the book

Walking away from the memorial and over Waverly Bridge, a steep climb up Cockburn Street, past Fleshmarket Close (a name that fans of Ian Rankin's Rebus will immediately recognise), brings the Old Town and its celebrated Royal Mile, a route in four sections that connects the Palace of Holyrood to the castle.

Standing on its High Street part, the choice of which way to turn is difficult. Those interested in economics may first wish to go left towards the Canongate kirk for it is there that the grave of Adam Smith, the author of The Wealth of Nations, can be found.

The kirk and its graveyard are brightened by the puckish figure of the poet Robert Fergusson, striding book in hand, late, it would seem, for a meeting with his friends at the Cape Club.

Continuing to walking east along the Canongate, Holyrood palace soon appears.

Once the home of the Scottish court and now Queen Elizabeth II's official residence in Scotland, it was the setting for Rafael Sabatini's historical thriller The Night of Holyrood. Sabatini - who is perhaps better known for Scaramouche and Captain Blood - was inspired by the murder in 1566 of Mary Queen of Scots' favourite David Rizzio in her own Holyrood chamber.

Turn around, go back down the Canongate and the Writers' Museum in the 17th Century Lady Stair's Close is a little beyond where Cockburn Street meets the High Street.

Lurking in this easily overlooked ‘close', or alleyway, in the Lawnmarket area, the free museum has paintings, letters, books and artefacts belonging to or connected with Burns, Stevenson and Scott.

For the keen phrenologist, there is even a cast of Burns's skull. Outside the museum, there are inscriptions in the stone slabs of quotes by famous Scottish writers.

However, if you prefer ‘Nearly Headless Nick' (otherwise known as Sir Nicholas de Mimsy Porpington) to the ‘science' of phrenology, then the Elephant House café is the place to go next. In this red-fronted building on George IV Bridge, JK Rowling is said to have created Harry Potter.

Perhaps there is something in the Edinburgh air: other world-renowned fantastical characters created by Edinburgh writers include JM Barrie's Peter Pan and Kenneth Grahame's Toad of Toad Hall.

After visiting the café, and if you still have time, energy and good weather, much of Edinburgh University - David Hume's alma mater - is not far away.

Other famous literary graduates of this ancient university (whose student newspaper was founded by Stevenson in 1887) include Thomas Carlyle, Peter Roget (the author of the first thesaurus) and Bruce Chatwin.

Although the city has more to offer - Alexander McCall Smith's Scotland Street, Sassoon and Owen's Craiglockhart Hospital, Muriel Spark's (and detective inspector John Rebus's) Marchmont as well as Irvine Welsh's ‘Sunny Leith' - these are for another day.

Edinburgh, or ‘Auld Reekie' (Old Smoky) as Fergusson called it, will wait to be read.

READERS' COMMENTS

MORE FROM ARABIANBUSINESS.COM