In our second podcast from the Edinburgh international book festival, we delve into the city's dark underbelly.
Ever since the days of Burke and Hare, Edinburgh has had a reputation for the grisly – a reputation compounded by one of the city's most famous literary sons, Robert Louis Stevenson, and his enduringly spooky novel, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In today's podcast, therefore, we attempt to find out whether the reputation was well-earned – and what state gothic literature is in in the 21st century.
Louise Welsh, whose work is rooted in Scotland's murkier side, takes Xan Brooks on a gothic tour of Edinburgh, including the Surgeon's Hall Museums and the catacombs beneath the city where legend has it plague victims were walled up. Meanwhile, back at the festival, Richard T Kelly and Kevin MacNeil talk about the different ways in which Stevenson's classic influenced their new novels, and Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!, set in the Florida Everglades, discuss a different type of gothic novel, drawing on the landscape and social and religious idiosyncrasies of America's deep south.
Reading list
Swamplandia! By Karen Russell (Chatto & Windus)
The Possessions of Doctor Forrest by Richard T Kelly (Faber)
A Method Actor's Guide to Jekyll and Hyde by Kevin MacNeil (Polygon)
Naming the Bones by Louise Welsh (Canongate)
