OF THE DAY

VISITORS to Edinburgh can hardly avoid encountering the capital’s splendid collection of statues. Stewart Conn singles out four in his 2016 collection, Against the Light (Mariscat Press, £6):

DAVID HUME He sits slouched, his incongruous toga no protection against incessant rain, downcast eyes glazed, oblivious of the tourists jostling to take selfies or queuing to rub his lustrous big toe, before receding to a safe distance from which they remain on the qui vive, like those who skulked for nights after his Calton burial to see if the Devil would come to claim his soul.

ROBERT FERGUSSON Outside the gates to the Canongate Kirk, a spritely Robert Fergusson is caught in jaunty mid-stride yards from a slide made by a group of local children in whose horseplay he’d like to join, nimbly catching and returning their snowballs, before heading for the Scottish Parliament, the Poetry Library or the nearest alehouse – his last days in Bedlam, a crown of straw plaited by his own hand, forgotten.

SCOTT MONUMENT A crusting of snow thickens then crumbles, turning this draughty belvedere into a tower of sugar-icing, multi-tiered and tapered, making Gothic gargoyles of Madge Wildfire, Jeanie Deans, Bailie Nicol Jarvie and all those carved round its spiral staircase, while smack at the centre, in white marble, their creator looks out benignly; under a chill blanket his loyal deer-hound Maida, uncomplaining as ever.

HENRY DUNDAS At the mercy of the elements, does Henry Dundas aloof in St Andrew Square still ponder having been the most powerful politician of his day? Either way, unlikely he looks kindly on the skaters circling below, the helter-skelter and festooned carousel; far less, as a break in the clouds reveals the view across the Forth, the American couple emerging from Harvey Nick’s and her ‘honey, I didn’t realise France was so close’.