The Dark Alleys of Old Edinburgh | Britain's Most Historic Towns

The secrets of the past are all around us, hidden in our streets, buried under our feet, and in this series I'll be uncovering those secrets as I explore Britain's most historic towns. I'll be deciphering physical clues. It's like very early animation. And getting to know some extraordinary characters who are often overlooked. He operated like a spymaster. With the help of Ben Robinson's eye in the sky, I'll discover which towns across the UK reveal the most about each period in British history and find out how those stories still resonate today. 3,880. More and more individuals are still dying from the plague. It's quite overwhelming. From the adventurous Elizabethans to the elegant Georgians, from medieval knights through to the height of empire, I'll tell the story of an era through the story of a single town. Today I'm exploring the Georgian era, in a town where living in dark alleys led to an age of enlightenment. Here you have people of all different ranks really mingling together. Where a new town with dazzling ambition was built. This is magnificent. Big, isn't it? And where current events are highlighting a controversial past. A statue is part of our history. It's my history. It's a town that once played host to violent rebellion and then a party that united the kingdom. This was a way for Scotland to present itself to the world but that didn't rock the boat too much. If you really want to understand how the Georgians shaped Britain on both sides of the border, Edinburgh is the place to come. Edinburgh is Scotland's charismatic capital. Some even call it the Athens of the North. Set among seemingly never-ending hills, this city of half a million people is the political and cultural heart of the nation. Tourists flock to Edinburgh especially when it hosts the world's largest art and comedy festival. And it's no surprise to learn that these ancient streets inspired the setting for the Harry Potter phenomenon. But the real story of Edinburgh starts around 900 BC when a small settlement was established on the formidable Castle Rock. Situated deep in Scotland's central belt near the vast Firth of Forth estuary, well-connected Edinburgh grew steadily throughout the Middle Ages until it became the country's capital in the mid-15th century. Edinburgh for me always seems to have this air of prestige and confidence but during the Georgian period it was right at the centre of some of the biggest upheavals in British history. The coronation of King George I in 1714 heralded the start of the Georgian era. German-speaking George may not have had the strongest claim to the throne but he was Protestant which made him ideal. The next 123 years saw Great Britain ruled by five kings, four of whom went by the name of George. This was the time of the first industrial revolution with new technologies and raw power boosting productivity and extending the global reach of Britain's interests. Just seven years before George I took to the throne there'd been a seismic change in the country with the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain. Great Britain as a political entity is a relatively recent invention historically. It has only existed for just over 300 years going back to the Act of Union being voted through here in Edinburgh on the 16th of But at that point rather strangely the monarch of England and the monarch of Scotland had been one and the same person for more than 100 years. That came about because in 1603 the childless Queen Elizabeth had died leaving England without an heir. It fell to her distant relative King James VI of becoming King James I of England. For the first time in history England and Scotland were united under one monarch. Over the 80 years that followed Stuart monarchs would reign over far from peaceful kingdoms. There was civil war, the execution of a king, a republic and then the restoration of the But in 1688 that monarchy was in trouble again. There was tension between the king and his subjects and eventually that king, King James II of England, the seventh of Scotland, the last Catholic king was deposed and exiled to Europe. But a new movement arose that would stop at nothing to see Catholic James back on the throne. Its proponents were known as the Jacobites and I've come to the mighty Edinburgh castle to meet Professor Murray Pittock and find out more. So Murray, who were the Jacobites? The Jacobites are the supporters of a restoration of the main Stuart line after James the seventh of Scotland and second of England was exiled in 1688. And why was he exiled? Because people feared his Catholicism and because they feared other aspects of what was seen as his centralising power. His followers became called Jacobites because Jacobus is the Latin for James. But what's important and why they're still so well remembered is because what they wanted went far beyond the restoration of James. They wanted a multi-kingdom monarchy with capitals in London, Dublin and Edinburgh. Since 1688 there'd been several Jacobite uprisings but in 1745 they really shook Britain's status quo. James II's son sent his son, who'd grown up in staunchly Catholic France, to Scotland to try and wrestle back the His nickname was Bonnie Prince Charlie. Tells Edward coming back to Scotland, I mean that's turned into this wonderfully romantic myth of Bonnie Prince Charlie. What's the reality behind it? Well the reality is he comes and of course everyone says, you know, where are your soldiers? And he says, you know, I thought you'd be my soldiers. They say, you must be absolutely joking, you know how big the British army is. But he does win people over because he's extremely charismatic and he's able to raise the standard with 1100 men, move south and gradually more and more until his army in the end is around about 14,000 strong. And when Charles Edward Stuart enters Edinburgh in 1745 there are a crowd of around 20,000 to greet him. And then what happened? Well Charles Edward by a single vote got the agreement of the army to march south into England and they marched south as far as Derby. At Derby they vote to retreat and he doesn't like this because it's, in his view, a very bad strategic decision. Because the chances of winning if you've gone ahead are slim, the chances of losing if you retreat are total. Could have so easily gone differently, very differently. It's a fascinating moment and it's the greatest military threat faced by Great Britain in aggregate during the 18th century because it's the only one that's fundamentally existential. What about Edinburgh castle itself? Did Charles Edward ever manage to take the castle? No, Charles never took the castle because one of the funniest things about this city is it's not built on a river because this is such a strong defensible position that it was worth making all the sacrifices of not having running water there. From any angle, Edinburgh's castle looks like a tough nut to crack. Aerial archaeologist Ben Robinson has launched a drone to get an even better look at this formidable fortress. That's just brilliant, just to elevate above the ground like that and just see it looming in front of me. The immediately striking thing is the rock that it sits on, this great plug of volcanic rock rising out of the city. So you can see there's the core of the medieval castle here but there's all these other defences around it and they were really beefing these up at the time of the Jacobite rebellions. How would the Jacobites take it? Well there was an attempt in 1715 when a couple of infiltrators on the inside of the garrison attempted to let the Jacobites outside in by lowering a rope ladder but it was too short. They couldn't actually reach the people outside so it was a comedy of errors really but you'd need some ladder to get into that place. Now in 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites controlled the rest of Edinburgh. They'd marched in without firing a shot but with these guns mounted on all these batteries they could fire at any point in the city and after a few cannon shells had knocked a few houses down, killed a few people, the Jacobites had no response. They had no heavy weapons themselves and they just had to withdraw, leaving Edinburgh to the garrison. Bonnie Prince Charlie's Jacobite uprising was ultimately quashed when his army was wiped out at the Battle of Culloden. The British government wanted to ensure that such a rebellion would never happen again. They stamped down hard, they rounded up the rebels who, if they were lucky, ended up in prison. If they weren't, they were executed. And in the Highlands, land was seized from the clan chiefs and the wearing of Highland dress was banned except for military personnel. For the Highlands, for the culture there, it was an unmitigated disaster. However the well-to-do urban population would fare rather better because in the decades that followed, Edinburgh would undergo a quintessential Georgian makeover. I'm in Edinburgh, the perfect place to get a taste of life in Georgian Britain and to learn about the complexities of Scotland's young and delicate partnership with England. With the Jacobites defeated and the Union secure, life in Edinburgh could return to normal. Britain may have been on the cusp of the first industrial revolution but living conditions for many in towns and cities were fairly basic to say the least, even positively medieval, and Edinburgh was no exception. To help me understand the town's layout and the influence it had on life here, I'm meeting historian Alison Duncan in the heart of the old town. Alison, hi. Hi Alice. This has to be the most iconic bit of Edinburgh, surely, the Royal Mile? Pretty much, yeah. We're standing here right on the mile itself. When you look down to the east there, it drops away down to the sea and then west up to the Castle Rock. So this is the Royal Mile but for citizens it's just the High Street. And looking up and down the street here, how much of what we're seeing is Georgian? Quite a lot of it on the facades and people improved their interiors over time but you've got this backbone of the High Street and off it all these dark alleyways, we call them closes in Scots, winds if they're a little bit wider. Yeah. And you have these tenement buildings, they were called lands. There's a good example of a tenement further up the High Street at Milne's Corch, shall we go and take a look at it? Yeah, yeah. During the early Georgian period, in many European cities, an age of enlightenment was dawning. This was the vibrant exchange and flourishing of new ideas in science, the arts and philosophy. Nowhere were these debates more intense than here in Edinburgh's densely packed apartment blocks. So what kind of class of people would have been living in tenements like this? That was one real feature of Edinburgh because in other cities where sociability is more controlled in people's houses, here you have people of all different ranks really mingling together. The aristocracy who had apartments here in town would be living on the same stair as lawyers, as students, perhaps as tradespeople. Ideas were exchanged really easily. That said though, like a lot of cities where life is very crammed, there were the almost invisible demarcations of who lived where and how they lived. Certainly you lived on the first or the second floors if you were well off. In a way you have to get on the stairs before you are. Exactly, yeah. You've hit the nail on the head because if you imagine everything that needs to come into your house, whether it's water or coal or your food, has to be carried literally up those stairs and then everything that has to come out of your house, all the rubbish, the coal ash and the toilets. So what often happened was late at night a maidservant would just open the shutter, quick check, out you go. If you're lucky she shouts, Gardez-lou, which supposedly is from the French, prenez garde à l'eau, watch out for the water. You're very lucky if it's just water. With streets coated in slippery organic matter, moving around a town while keeping your boots and hems clean presented a challenge. Door-to-door transport was called for but the prodigiously steep narrow alleys meant horse-drawn carts were out of the question and good old sedan chairs were in. I've been carried in a chair before like this but I haven't tried carrying one so should we have a go? Let's give it a go. Okay. We use these straps? Yes, they go over the back, see how we do it. And then you just leap them over the poles do you? Yeah I think so. Ready, go, lift. Oh that's not too bad, I reckon I could do this. That's alright. And set it down. Okay, now look that was far too easy so I think we need a volunteer. Georgia! Adding our production assistant to the payload would make this a bit more realistic. Now we'll see what we're made of. Is she brave? Are you brave enough to go in here? I don't know. I think you're being very brave. Good luck, Georgia. Thank you. Ready? Yeah. Okay, lift. No, whoa, no. It's really heavy. What I'm finding is... I don't know, there's nothing about Georgia, this is just trying to lift a person in this chair. As you lift at the front, it comes back. Do you want to try lifting first? We could give it a go. Right, I'm in position. Okay, I'm lifting at the back. Okay. Do you want to try a step? Left foot forward. Okay. Okay. Whoa! That's okay. Yep, there's a tree in front of me. I think that's going to be the shortest. Should we set down? Set down. The shortest sedan chair trip in history, I think. Georgia was saying I think we should just run up the high street with this. Yeah, up to the castle. Okay, we'll do that but you can't film it. Okay, that's a bit different. At least the hard-working chairman never had to go far because as Edinburgh's population boomed in the mid-1700s, this town grew upwards rather than sprawling outwards. Some of its tenements were like skyscrapers, 14 storeys tall. People were packed in like sardines. It was noisy, smelly and smoky, earning it the nickname Old Reekie. To keep up with the times, Edinburgh needed to spread its wings but its geology was holding it back. Aerial archaeologist Ben Robinson is taking his drone up to get a look at the wider landscape. I'm looking at Princess Street Gardens here and they're looking beautiful. This great green lung running right through the heart of the city. Yeah, I can see that what I'm actually looking at is a small valley and there's the old town clinging to the side of this valley. Now, this was the site of the Knorr Lock. It'd been formed by glaciers tens of thousands of years ago and the Knorr Lock posed a problem because as Edinburgh grew, the lock was a constraint. It was a physical barrier and worse than that, everything that was produced in the old town, everything noxious and disgusting ended up in the lock. So it became this filthy, disgusting, horrible place. A few witches were even thrown into it apparently. So that was a real problem for expanding Edinburgh. Hemmed in with stinking marshland and with this burgeoning population ever more densely packed into the town, Old Reekie was losing its charm and eventually the council decided enough was enough. In 1759, the unloved lock was drained and a bridge built across the valley. This would connect the old town to an undeveloped strip of land just to the north. At the same time, a competition was launched to find a design for the new town that would be built here. The winning layout was by a young local architect named James Craig. To find out how this ambitious project was realised, I've come to the new town to meet historian Tony Lewis. Nice to meet you. Lovely to see you here in Newtown. Yeah, Edinburgh's Newtown. Yeah. A new start for the city. So 250 years ago, before they start building here, this is just fields. This is just fields. Greenfield development. And you would have had a surveyor surveying the ground to make sure that everything added up. So you find on James Craig plans, it's regularly divided out like a monopoly board into plots of a certain size. So the council's saying, we're doing this, we're creating this grand scheme for the new town and you can buy a bit of it. You can buy as much as you like, but they recommended, you know, kind of a 30 to 40 foot plot. And what are the key parts of that plan then? This square. This square, the other square, and the grid of streets. Princess Street to one side, Queen Street to the other. I think the symbolism in the street names is kind of a physical representation of the politics of the time. It's fascinating. Absolutely. The Thistle Streets and Rose Streets. There, immediately, you've got this idea of union of Scotland and England. St Andrew's Square and George Street. You've got something that's very Scottish with something that was very British in its street names and its place names. Let's go explore some of these other streets. Allowing developers to buy a single plot and build to their own designs has given many of the new town streets a charmingly eclectic character. What about these? Are these Georgian? This is slightly later. But there's one area which is much more uniform. Four impressive terraces surrounding a square. It's the first time I've actually been allowed in. Named to honour King George III's wife. Well, here we are. Charlotte Square. Charlotte Square. In we go. Oh, this is magnificent. It's big, isn't it? It's huge. Is it bigger than St Andrew's Square? It's exactly the same size. Everything's about symmetry on Craig's plan. So this is still part of Craig's plan? Yes. But Craig's not the architect of these buildings? No, this is Robert Adam. The Robert Adam. The King's architect. The nationally prestigious architect. Known up and down the country for his work. So by the time he does this, he's already famous? Very famous. He was the man to get... This gives it a presence. This gives it a wow factor. Yeah, I mean, it is wow still today, isn't it? It is. It's a decades-long project by the time we reach here. It's about 30 years to get to this point. And even for the tradesmen, as we see today behind us, there's still people up on scaffolds. And for tradesmen up there, back in the 1790s, some of them ended up going to America and helped building the White House. Some of them went to Russia and helped plan out New Moscow after 1812. Edinburgh had got a European and global dynamic to it. So it's not just captured as being a satellite state to England. It's an important international city in an important country. So as it entered the 19th century, Edinburgh had the elegant streets the town's elite had hankered after. And now its financial and scientific institutions could thrive with far-reaching consequences, both good and ghoulish. I'm in Edinburgh to learn about Georgian Britain and the crucial role that this town played in shaping the United Kingdom. With the town being expanded and upgraded, Edinburgh was on the up. Of course, transformation doesn't come cheap. And as with almost any commercial activity, a ready source of credit was vital. I've come back to the new town, to the Royal Bank of Scotland's original head office, to get an exclusive look at some evidence that I've been told shows the stereotype of the financially astute Scot may well be founded on fact. Oh, look at these. Now I've got some treasures from the archives here of the Royal Bank of Scotland. And here are some banknotes. This one, which is really early, 1727. So at this point, banknotes had only been in use for a few decades. So this is a very, very early banknote. And as well as some of the printed material on it, there's a lot of handwriting on it as well. Now, this is a book of minutes of the directors of the Royal Bank of Scotland, which sounds a bit dry. But actually, there's some really important juicy information in here. And this paragraph is really important. This refers to a Mr. William Hogg, a merchant in Edinburgh. He's got a cash account with the bank, and that he's allowed to make overdrafts on the bank. So in other words, the bank is going to give him cash credit. To find out what this idea of instant cash meant for modern finance, I'm catching up with archivist Ruth Reid. Ruth, I've just been looking through the archives and finding the record of that cash credit. What did that mean in terms of what people could do with that money and how easy it was to get money? Well, in effect, you could call it the world's first overdraft authorisation, because it's the first time that something that we would think of like an overdraft was being offered. And what it meant was instead of having to take out a loan for a specific amount of money, you could have this arrangement where you could take up to a certain amount, but you'd only be paying interest on what you borrowed. So what that meant for a business, for example, is that they could handle their cash flow much more slickly. You could pay suppliers before your customers have paid you. I saw some of the early bankmates up there from the archive, and they're wonderful. Is this the first time that there were royal portraits on banknotes? Yes, in fact, we think it's the first time that any portrait, specifically of a person, was on a British banknote. For example, the Bank of England didn't have the Queen on its banknotes until 1960, whereas the Royal Bank started doing it in 1727. And what did that royal portrait mean on the banknote? Is it just decoration? It's not just decoration, although it certainly makes the look impressive and attractive and eye-catching, but also it's a really good anti-forgery measure because people are really good at faces. So if there's something a little bit wrong on that face, they're going to see it, and they'll know it's not a real note. And the banking industry really took off in Scotland. I mean, it seems to be something that Scotland is really known for. Certainly, if you look at some of the oldest banks in London, a number of them were founded and run by Scottish families. And then even if you go out to Canada or Australia or South Africa, if you're looking in the 19th century into the 20th century, an awful lot of their bankers were Scottish trained lads who'd gone out there. By the early 1800s, innovative banking and healthy competition were turbocharging the economy. Britain's industrial revolution was in full swing, and for the lucky few, a better way of life was becoming a reality. Edinburgh's New Town had shown how civil modern urban living could be, and now there was an appetite for even grander designs. Ben Robinson has launched his drone to see how the city was shaping up. There's the New Town development here, this great rectilinear plan, and the rich, the newly wealthy, couldn't get enough of it. And the Earl of Moray had a bit of land adjacent to it, and he thought, right, here's a way to make a lot of cash. But his land was a bit hemmed in by this almost cliff running down here. So he got a very talented architect to come up with a design based on these geometrical shapes. There's a crescent, Randolph Crescent, Ainslie Place, and Moray Place down here. The symmetry is absolutely wonderful. So if we could just take the drone up a bit and get this vertical view, I'm now looking at the centrepiece of the whole design, Moray Place. This, even by the standards of the New Town, was impressive stuff. I was going to say these are like mini palaces, but there's nothing mini about them at all. They are palaces. While new housing vastly improved the lives of wealthy and healthy Georgians, anyone who got ill had a problem, and in many cases would have faced a premature death. Life expectancy had barely improved since the Middle Ages. But in Edinburgh, a growing emphasis on thorough scientific study would help to change that. I'm an anatomist. I'm fascinated by the structure of the human body, and anatomy is such a fundamental science. It underpins medicine and, of course, surgery. And if you were to choose anywhere to come and learn anatomy in Georgian Britain, it would be here in Edinburgh. To help me understand how Edinburgh garnered this reputation, I've come to meet Professor Tom Gillingwater at the University of Edinburgh. And how well respected was the medical school here in Edinburgh, in Britain and even more widely? Well, it attracted people to come and study here from all four corners of the globe. Perhaps more importantly, it acted as the centre to then send those individuals back to where they'd originally come from to set up similar medical schools. So, for example, graduates from the medical school here in Edinburgh went and set up many of the leading medical schools in North America. And there were some very famous professors of anatomy here. There was that dynasty of Monroe's. Yes, absolutely. They really ruled over the Edinburgh anatomy scene for 900 years. And how were they teaching anatomy? What were their ideas about how this subject should be taught? They'd learned from the best of anatomy on the continent, and they'd seen the importance of learning anatomy by experience of a body. You know, you wouldn't trust your car mechanic to service your car after having read a manual. You'd want them to have actually seen an engine and worked on it. Even better, strip the engine. No, absolutely. And then at some point we get independent private medical schools setting themselves up almost in competition with the university. Yes, so there was a proliferation of enterprising individuals who realised that they could set up their own, essentially anatomy demonstration schools, where people would pay to come and watch the best of the best demonstrate their wares. So Robert Knox was one of the best. He was a real showman. Come and see Dr Knox. So this is a poster for one of his lectures then? A series of lectures. Often over a week, he could only teach for as long as a body would remain fresh. So this one says, arrangements have been made to secure, as usual, an ample supply of anatomical subjects. That was what Edinburgh was known for. It was anatomy on the real thing, anatomy on the body. You're only going to be as good as the bodies you can provide. And this is where the story really does take a macabre turn. Tom's brought me to nearby Greyfriars Kirkyard to show me the effects of this insatiable appetite for cadavers to dissect. To be honest, they couldn't get sufficient bodies from the normal distribution channels, which essentially were executed criminals. So a lot of the bodies were coming from illicit activities, in a large part grave robbing. So what's this about? So this is a mort slave, an example of where essentially the individual who'd been buried would be protected from the grave robbers by placing these iron railings, grills, on top of the actual grave. And then of course, in Edinburgh, it does take on an even more macabre twist with Knox and with his ample supply of bodies. Absolutely, yes. So they wanted the freshest bodies and this is what led to Burke and Howe. So William Burke and William Howe, who were Irish, come over to Edinburgh looking for work. Yes, they essentially saw the opportunity and in the end murdered, we know of at least 16 individuals that they murdered to provide to Robert Knox. I mean, it goes right back there. I mean, you sent me this document, which is written by one of the Monroes. Yes. About what you should look for in a cadaver, in a corpse. And it's quite chilling reading. First, make your choice of body of good constitution and habit, not graced with fat. So they don't want to be having to cut through too much fat to get to the organs and the muscles. Nor impoverished with leanness of a middle age and stature that received death, neither by disease nor wound, but choked or strangled. Yep, so Burke and Howe were just delivering what had been requested. These gruesome events highlighted the horrors of an unregulated underground trade in cadavers. And to combat that, in 1832, the Anatomy Act was passed. The Anatomy Act meant that the supply of bodies to medical schools was regulated and that paved the way for what we have today, where generous-hearted people bequeath their bodies, donate their bodies to medical schools. So grave robbing aside, George in Edinburgh was a pioneer in medical science. But it would be an old-fashioned visit from the king that would heal old wounds, with a brand launch like no other, and a new identity for a nation. I'm exploring the grand streets and hidden alleys of Edinburgh, uncovering events from the Georgian era, a period that saw the creation of the United Kingdom we know today. Following the failed Jacobite uprisings, Scotland had slowly been adjusting to the merger with England. However, not since 1633 had a reigning English monarch actually paid a visit here. It was finally time for the royal embrace. In 1822, King George IV decides that he's going to pay the good people of Scotland a visit, and this is a completely different scenario from almost 80 years before the final Jacobite rebellion, with troops surging from the south into Scotland. This time, Scotland is welcoming a monarch, and he's arriving by sea. He disembarks here at the Quayside and Leith, and there's a record of this moment in a really unlikely place. This is a splendid room to find inside a police station, because this used to be the council chamber, but this is the painting I've come to look at. Look at that, it's huge! So this is recording the arrival of George IV in Leith. There he is, look, right in the middle. Looking rather splendid, being greeted by all the great and good. Look at all these crowds of people, very excited to see him. It's a bit of PR, of course it's a bit of PR, you know, he's arriving as this Hanoverian king, but he is monarch of the Union, he's monarch of Great Britain and Ireland, so this is quite something for the people of Scotland. Some nefarious activities as well, though. There's a pickpocket here, taking advantage of the fact that this man's not so interested in the king actually, he's more interested in this lovely lady. When you start looking, you've got lovely details, people wearing kind of tartan shawls and I think some heather in the bonnet, and the people with the best views of all are the sailors up there, look, on the yard arms of their ships, all crowded on to see their king arriving. And it is propaganda, obviously, you know, you want to show that he's being greeted, he's being feted, people are delighted to see him and, you know, the thousands of people, but it was a big day. The ostentatious welcoming ceremony was to be followed by processions and events that would cement Scotland's role at the heart of the Union. The man who ended up organising most of the pageantry was Edinburgh's own literary superstar, the romantic novelist Sir Walter Scott. To find out about his role in these era-defining events, I've travelled an hour south of Edinburgh, to Abbotsford, and Scott's country retreat in the Scottish Borders. Hi, welcome to Abbotsford. Its curator is Kirsty Archer-Thompson. Kirsty Walter Scott at this point in time is a best-selling novelist, but I still don't understand why that makes him the right man for this job, for planning this huge event. What happens is a committee is set up, he's part of that committee, it encompasses historians, antiquarians, artists, people who have a stake in the history of Scotland and how it's presented a ceremonial event, and Scott is brimming with ideas and enthusiasm, all of his research from writing his novels, and ends up taking the reins. I think the rest of the committee are terribly pleased about that because it's a heck of a project management job. Did he write much about the whole planning process, about how he came up with the ideas, and do you get a Scott's left us a plethora of letters where he's scratching his head on all manner of things, and you know one of the key things that he does in the run-up to the King's visit is he calls the clans, just like you would have done of old, he sends out a missive to all of the Highland chiefs to bring their clans down to Edinburgh in this incredible ceremonial act. What do the clan chiefs, do we know what they really thought about it? Because this is kind So Scott gets quite a mixed response from the clans, some are very supportive and turn out in their droves, others don't turn up at all. What he does manage to do is get them to turn out in numbers that really show Edinburgh that Scotland is more than than just the lowlands, but of course you can pivot that round and say that almost through inviting the clans, he over sort of Celtifies the image of Scotland and that's often an accusation people make. And it must have been spectacular. Absolutely, I mean don't forget that 14% of Scotland's population, you know 300,000 people according to the newspapers, flock to the city. You know people hanging out of windows, hanging off lampposts, all to get a view of the King. Scott wanted everybody to be able to see him and it caused a sensation, you know it was completely unprecedented. The centrepiece of Scott's plans to honour the King was a splendidly choreographed Highland ball. All the male guests were instructed to wear the ancient Highland dress, creating a mad scramble among the town's tailors, with the fashionable but corpulent King George donning his own kilt, albeit one that was a little short, a fact that was famously mocked at the time. It's quite complicated, you look at their footwork. Brilliant, thank you, transported us back 200 years. Scott's achievement in gaining royal approval for Highland costume, in particular the kilt, was a key moment for this garment, the country and the union. It's so weird because it starts off being a symbol almost of a kind of free and independent Scotland and then that is outlawed and then ends up being a symbol of a Scotland which is very much part of a union and very much part of Britain and then it's acceptable again. It's a fascinating tale and I think also this is something that Scott is working on in his novels as well, which is all bound up in the same enthusiasms and appetites of the age. It was the history of Scotland and the traditions of Scotland in a safe space. This was a way for Scotland to present itself to the world but that didn't rock the boat too much. I do think if Scott were alive today he would be absolutely fascinated with just how far that legacy has taken us. I bet he'd be delighted to see this, he'd be delighted to see people dressed in Highland tartan and doing Scottish dancing, he'd love it. Might be looking out the window now. Yeah, he might be. Love or loathe Scott's cunning blend of traditions and costume as a package it worked to treat and it's now part of the indelible image of Scottishness that keeps the tourists spending. There are other aspects of Georgian history that are less visible or at least they're hidden in plain sight and we're really only just starting to talk about them now. I'm back in the heart of Edinburgh's Newtown where a huge column looms over St Andrew's Square. To find out more about this statue and the controversy it's created I'm meeting campaigner Sir Geoff Palmer. Geoff, hello. Oh hi. Who is this man up on top of that very grand column? Well that's Henry Dundas but he's also known as the First Lord Melville. He was a Home Secretary, he was Treasurer of the Navy, Secretary of State for War, his sort of nickname was the Uncrowned King of Scotland. Really? Now he is important because he is the man that stopped Wilberforce from abolishing the slave trade for 15 years. So William Wilberforce is in Parliament, he's trying to get this bill passed to abolish the slave trade and Dundas actively opposes that? What he did, Wilberforce said the slave trade should be immediately abolished, Dundas said it should be gradually abolished. Why did he want to delay it? Well this is a very important point of debate because on the slave plantations in the West Indies at that time a slave didn't live longer than about 10 years, in fact it was less than that. Yeah. And therefore if people were dying at that rate then to replace them you needed a trade. You needed more people coming in. Absolutely, that's the horror of the slave trade. The monument's original plaque makes no reference to any role Dundas had in delaying the abolition of slave trading and there are many who have challenged that accusation. Four years ago a new plaque was proposed but a fractious committee couldn't reach a decision on its wording. So the committee's disbanded, no more discussion about a plaque until spring 2020. Yes, with the death of George Floyd, with the general reaction to that horrific killing, the council responded to the public and myself, I was sort of saying you know we've got to do something and the leader of Edinburgh council convened a committee and within five days we had a narrative with slavery on it. During all that I was recorded as saying I don't want statues down because people saying this one should come down. Yeah that's really interesting because statues have come down, you know Colston came down in and you know some historians say we should take them down, they're about celebrating figures and you think he should stay there? Of course, I think that a statue is part of our history, it's my history because the statue is put up in the centre of Edinburgh and therefore this is its context, if you remove it you're removing the context of our history. This saga exemplifies Britain's ongoing struggle to reinterpret its darkest Georgian legacies. Another example of why Edinburgh so powerfully encapsulates this fascinating age. It's a city where what is now a monument to the shifting perceptions of history stands among timeless luxurious architecture, where modern banking was given life and medical science thrived despite having a brush with death. A place that saw a bitter rebellious war but then hosted a royal reconciliation, becoming a key player in uniting a kingdom. That's why Edinburgh will always be associated with that most contradictory of periods, the Georgian era.