The Edinburgh bookshop is a lovely little gem of a bookshop located on 219 Bruntsfield Place. I set out to find it the moment I had checked into my hotel, after approaching the receptionist for some instructions on how to find it. She immediately grabbed a tourist map and marked the castle and the parliament before I had time to tell her that naturally I was here for the bookshops.

I turned up in the bookshop at the same time as Samantha Shannon was there signing books while doing research for another, so after following the Edinburgh Bookshop recommendation I got a signed copy.

And that’s not all. Now, it’s a lovely bookshop, and I remember being absolutely charmed by it even before the woman working there introduced me to THE LADDER. But after I met it, few other things mattered. They have a book ladder. One of those Beauty and the Beast-thing, that you can pull out and move across the shelves and use to reach the top shelves.

And authors get to sign it. Apparrently a drawing competition has started between the authors after one of them started drawing things. Samantha Shannon gloriously rose to the challange, while I stuck to words. My sister draws. I do not. Both of us naturally chose high places for our inscribing – if you get the chance to climb a book ladder, surely you take it?

I enclose a photo of the view from up there.