The QI Book of the Dead [antikvár]

Introduction This is a city of shifting light, of changing skies, of sudden vistas. A city so beautiful it breaks the heart again and again. ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH George Street in Edinburgh is one of the most elegant thoroughfares in one of the best-designed cities in the world. Wherever you stand along it, at one end can be seen the green copper dome of a Robert Adam church called St George's and, at the other, a massive stone column called the Melville Monument. Loosely modelled on Trajan's Column in Rome, it is not quite as tall as Nelson's Column in London but it is equally striking and certainly more beautifully situated. The architect was William Burn (1789-1870) but he had more than a little help from Robert Stevenson (1772-1850), the great Scottish civil engineer, better known for his roads, harbours and bridges - and especially for his daring and spectacular lighthouses. According to the metal plaque near the base of the column, Stevenson 'finahsed the dimensions and superintended the building of this 140-foot-high, i,50o-ton edifice utilising the world's first iron balance-crane, invented under his direction by Francis Watt in 1809-10 for erecting the Bell Rock lighthouse'.