Edinburgh is now and indeed has for long been a city of stark juxtapositions and piquant contrasts. Historically it is a place of outstanding learning and culture, and yet it has on occasions witnessed uncontrolled mob violence and savagery and the commission of crimes of exceptional brutality, or of such a bizarre nature that they pushed back the boundaries of what was known or thought possible. Even today, the largely sanitised and grossly commercialised Old Town somehow manages to retain corners with a vestigial sense of the skulduggery that has played so significant a role in its past

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