For a start, the 24 books we read were all prize winners – which ones to cut and why? We were also not choosing the most distinguished work of non-fiction from the past 25 years but the best of the Baillie Gifford, formerly the Samuel Johnson Prize. The judging process was long, enjoyable but also challenging. As chair of the judges, I announced the winner. The prize was celebrating its 25th anniversary and the dinner was held in the atrium of the Grand Gallery at the National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street. I was back in the city for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction Winner of Winners Award events. It’s a small city – so much is conveniently accessible to the walker or flâneur – but, apart from in August, when the mood changes during festival time, Edinburgh never seems too crowded, or hurried, or restless. I love the ordered formality and wide streets of the Georgian New Town the architectural grandeur that awaits as you emerge from the lower depths of Waverley Station the absence of security barriers outside Bute House, the First Minister’s official residence on Charlotte Square the sounds of the distant seagulls in the skies above, and the presence of the castle on the rock that looms but never threatens or menaces as Kafka’s did. I never tire of visiting Edinburgh, one of my favourite cities and surely one of the world’s greatest.
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