Val McDermid’s thriller brings a forgotten woman writer back to life in a story told in lights projected on to 12 buildings across other streets of the city. There’s a campaign, started last year, to celebrate the achievements of women in a city where there are statues honouring all manner of men, plus the dogs – Bobby and Bum – and Wojteck the bear.īut this New Town protest, as a friend suggested on Facebook, is a Message From The Skies, an imaginative offbeat stopping point on the literary trail co-commissioned with Edinburgh International Book Festival. And then carried on my way wondering what and why? I stopped to take a fumbled photo on my phone, barely stirring the gaze of the young woman smoking on the doorstep to Number 16. And where’s the statue to Muriel Spark and all the other creative female sparks in a city where “there are more statues of dogs than there are of women”?

His name is on plaques around town.īut how many people know his cousin Dorothy was a successful writer too, asks the illuminated window.

Everyone know s RLS. He grew up to create Jekyll and Hyde. That’s a sign to stop you in your tracks at 17 Heriot Row, childhood home of Robert Louis Stevenson, where the small and often sickly boy looked out for Leerie Lamplighter. Last night I found two blacked out windows, instead of drawing the public gaze inside they projected a different view with an eloquently illuminated protest shining out into the street.ĭid you know that in Edinburgh there are more statues of DOGS than there are of WOMEN? An interior decorator’s colour chart brought to life.

You can see into elegant rooms: walls of rich red, deep green, plentiful pastels. When we first came to Edinburgh I would often walk at dusk wistfully peering through windows of the New Town where curtains are rarely drawn. This is Leerie Lamplighter time in Edinburgh and I was remembering… After five o’clock in January the skies are dark and pavements less inviting. It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky

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