Long overdue: Revised, updated, freshly-illustrated Edinburgh joins the Companion Guide series, informative on Edinburgh's - and Scotland's - past and present. Edinburgh is one of Europe's most elegant and cosmopolitan cities, the Old Town rebuilt on the medieval street plan after being burned down by the English in 1544, and the eighteenth-century classical New Town more extensive thananything else of its kind in Europe. Edinburgh was the capital of an independent kingdom for more than two hundred and fifty years, and it has the air of a capital, with buildings where kings were born or where some of their moreprominent subjects were assassinated, streets once trodden by Mary Queen of Scots and Bonnie Prince Charlie, and a rich artistic life that comes into exhilarating full flower in August with the Edinburgh Festival. Edinburgh is also the gateway to some of the most spectacularly beautiful country in Britain: lying southward is the romantic landscape of the Borders, where Alexander Youngson is an admirable guide to the ruined abbeys, the castles thathave withstood countless sieges, and the great houses still owned by families 'that the Flood could not wash away'. A.J. YOUNGSON is former chairman of the Fine Art Commission for Scotland.

A comprehensive illustrated guide to Edinburgh's New Town. This book is all you'll need to get the most out of your visit to the New Town.

As well as being a practical guide it's an exhilarating read... It is a delightful thing: anybody contemplaing crossing to Ireland for pleasure shouldn't think of going without consulting it. OBSERVER

`It offers all that the visitor with a concern for beauty and for leisurely sight-seeing will require.' Financial Times`If ever a guidebook were designed to be read as literature it is Mr Honour's. Even those who know Venice welland love it well will add to their appreciation from this seemingly endless store of information.' Economist Offers all that the visitor with a concern for beauty and for leisurely sight-seeing will require. FINANCIAL TIMES The best guide book I have ever encountered... and a book I found it impossible not to read from beginning to end. OBSERVER There are few pleasanter ways of passing a summer's evening than sitting over a cup of coffee, and perhaps a glass of Aurum, in the Piazza San Marco. It is especially agreeable on those nights when the Venetian city band thunders away at some throbbingly romantic piece... And all the while the younger inhabitants parade around the square, chattering, flirting, quarrelling and staring at their visitors with that same unwinking gaze that Venetians have turned on their guests for the past five centuries. The facade of San Marco closes the scene in a glitter of golden mosaic and a bubbling of cupolas, while the great thick red campanile stretches up into the warm mothy darkness of the summer sky. Hugh Honour, it is clear, knows Venice exceptionally well and catches the rhythms of the city's life with unerring skill. His guide, with its winning blend of evocativedetail and precise information, spurs the reader to investigate Venice's wonders: Piazza San Marco is only the beginning of a journey into the heart of Venice and its history.

Berlin's traumatic past and vibrant present explored and explained in a guide to the culture, buildings and society of the city. Most people do not think of Berlin as a beautiful city, but it is filled with stunning sights, sounds and textures, all the more astonishing when the stories behind them are revealed. Today's Berlin is new and vibrant, but historyhas left its scars. A look in the right place is rewarded with glimpses of the glories of old Prussia as well as the abominations of Hitler's Third Reich and of the outer bulwark of the Soviet empire. Brian Ladd, a historian whohas been returning to Berlin for twenty-five years, pays homage to the familiar landmarks, but he also penetrates into obscure corners of the city and brings them alive with his shrewd and informed comment. He explains what the sights of Berlin have meant to Berliners who coped under kings and dictators, and who toiled, suffered and celebrated as their city was destroyed and rebuilt. This book invites you to share their passions as it draws you into the dynamic new capital that has risen from wreckage of post-war German history. BRIAN LADD is at the State University of New York at Albany. He has been a constant visitor to Berlin over a quarter of a century.

As a guide to the hidden city, reconstructed, imagined and remembered, as well as to St Petersburg today, this book is highly recommended. It will take you to parts of the city and corners of buildings that other guides do not reach and reveal stories that others do not tell.

The history and culture of Madrid, the cluster of historical cities at an easy distance (Segovia, Avila and Toledo) and the heartlands of Castile - the core of Spanish civilisation. This book performs with great thoroughness all the usual functions of a guidebook. But it is much more than a mere inventory of buildings, paintings, sculpture, routes and views, supplemented by appendices packed with practical information. The authors - from their long experience and deep knowledge of the country - are exceptionally well-equipped to draw together into a coherent whole all the threads of history, art, culture and recent developments. Theysteer you in most rewarding directions, enlivening the hallowed hush of museum or sacristy with an original interpretation of some great painter - El Greco, Goya, Picasso - or an observation which suddenly illuminates the seemingly unexceptional. Madrid, rather than just a political capital at the geographical centre of the country, is revealed as a true metropolis, genuinely representative of all the aspects and regional variations of Spanish life. Its art collections are justly renowned as superb. Add in the cluster of historical cities at an easy distance (including Segovia, Avila and Toledo), to say nothing of the lesser-known treasures and delights secreted in the heartlands of Castile, and you have, within a manageable compass, the core of Spanish civilisation.