One Sweet Moment - The History Behind the Story
One Sweet Moment is above all a love story. One reviewer described it as 'Romance with a capital R'. It's also a coming-of-age story, an historical novel and a love letter to Edinburgh. Scotland's capital city is beautiful, and full of history. The past is round every corner and down every close. These narrow passageways off Edinburgh's High Street, also known as the Royal Mile, lead to old pubs, hidden gardens, courtyards and houses and they all have a story to tell, often recounted in plaques at their individual entrances.
Edinburgh also has a network of underground vaults and it's in those under the South Bridge that much of the story of the book plays out. Kate Dunbar lives and works in the vaults off the Cowgate. Once a grassy valley, this ancient street can most easily be reached from the High Street by walking down the slope of Niddry Street or Blair Street. Recently rediscovered, the atmospheric underground chambers can be visited on guided tours. Type 'tour Edinburgh's underground vaults' into a search engine and the names of the companies which organize these will come up.
As a wealthy young man from the New Town, Richard Hope is both attracted by the vibrancy and rough honesty of the Cowgate and the Old Town and appalled by the poverty and squalor he encounters there. Through his love for Kate and the people to whom she introduces him, he begins to question why the two halves of Edinburgh live such unfairly divided lives. One young man who documented the lives of the ordinary people of Edinburgh at this time was the artist Walter Geikie, who has a cameo role in South Bridge.
The Cowgate Near the Foot of Libberton (sic) Wynd by Walter Geikie
The 1820s were a period of political upheaval and transition in Scotland, when the old rigid order finally gave way to the long march to democracy. This is reflected in South Bridge in the character of Radical bookseller Nathaniel Henderson. He and his wife Peggy befriend Kate and her brother Andrew. In my story, I have Nathaniel having got himself into trouble in 1820, speaking up for the leaders of the Radical Rising of that year. This was brutally suppressed, three of the Radical leaders publicly executed at Stirling and Glasgow. A brief account of the Radical Rising of 1820 can be found in my new history of Red Clydeside, When the Clyde Ran Red.
In 1822, King George IV visited Edinburgh. This huge event was extremely influential in the history of Scotland, England and Great Britain. A firm believer in the political union between England and Scotland which is now being called into question, Sir Walter Scott orchestrated and stage-managed the King's visit. In 1822, only 75 year after the Battle of Culloden and two years after the Radical Rising, Scott was determined to show a Scotland that was not a cradle of rebellion and revolution. He chose instead, to Nathaniel Henderson and Richard Hope's mutual disgust, to present Scotland exclusively as a land of outstanding natural beauty, myth, legend, romance and Highlanders swathed in tartan.
In so doing, Scott fixed the image of all Scotland as a Highland one, a powerful idea which endures to this day. For an excellent and very readable account of the King's visit and all that lay behind it and came from it, read John Prebble's The King's Jaunt.
One Sweet Moment culminates in the drama of the Great Fire of Edinburgh of 1824. As told in the book, it was indeed thought that this disastrous fire started because a careless clerk left his work one evening and forgot to blow out the candle by which he had been working. The Great Fire also saw the emergence of James Braidwood, then a young man of 24. Braidwood went on to become the founder of the London Fire Brigade and is revered world-wide as the father of modern fire-fighting. A statue of him now stands in Edinburgh's Parliament Square. It's not every day a handsome Jacobite - in his full regimentals - strides up to you and announces: "Hi, Maggie, I'm the man on the cover of your book!" What a thrill it was to meet Ian Deveney of Inverness at this year's commemoration of the Battle of Culloden. The photograph of him which became the cover of Bare-Arsed Banditti: The Men of the '45 was taken while he was helping recreate the battle for the film which is now shown in the total immersion theatre at the new NTS visitor centre at Culloden and which many visitors find a deeply moving experience. As a Jacobite, Ian Deveney is an officer in Lord Ogilvy's Regiment. He also runs his own living history company, Battlescar, bringing the '45 and other periods of Scottish history to life for schools, social events, tour groups and corporate clients. More information at www.battlescar.co.uk
Met at Culloden: The Man on the Cover!