How - in the eighteenth century - did a notoriously poor, alcoholic, violent and smelly town, consisting of just two long streets and 40,000 inhabitants, make such an impression on its age and on ours So that Voltaire wrote with a dash of malice that 'today it is from Scotland that we get rules of taste in all the arts, from epic poetry to gardening' In just 50 years Edinburgh had more impact on our ideas than any town of its size since the Athens of Socrates.