In 1934–5 writer Edwin Muir travelled the breadth of Scotland to take the temperature of his country in what proved to be a rather dyspeptic analysis. Here he records his impressions of the capital.
Within a stone’s throw of one end of Princes Street begins a promenade quite different in character. This is Leith Street and its continuation Leith Walk, a long spacious boulevard containing some fine old houses, which have with time sunk to the status of working-class tenements. Here, instead of the cosy tea-rooms and luxurious hotel lounges of Princes Street, one suddenly finds oneself among ice-cream and fishand-chip bars and pubs. At one point the two different streams of promenaders are brought within a few yards of each other; yet they scarcely ever mingle, so strong is the sense of social distinction bred by city life. They turn back when they reach this invisible barrier, apparently without thought or desire, as if they were stalking in a dream; and if, through necessity or whim, an occasional pedestrian should trespass for a little on enemy ground, he is soon frightened and scurries back as fast as he can. The prostitutes are the sole class who rise superior to this inhibition. They live, as members of the proletariat, in the poorer districts, but their main beat is Princes Street, and it has in their eyes the prestige and familiarity of a business address. But their occupation seems to be the sole remaining one in modern society which acts as a general dissolvent of all social distinctions; and that in reality is because they are tacitly outlawed by all society, in which the principle of class distinction is constantly operative. The ordinary crowds, not possessing this classless power, turn back at a certain point. The upper and lower middle classes, the men about town, clerks, commercial travellers, students, patrol Princes Street, because, without being conscious of it, they look upon that walk as a preserve where they can be at their complete ease, and where nobody will ever intrude upon them. And this calculation is justified. Their seclusion is as perfect as if they were behind locked doors.