Shorter Notice
Auld Reekie. By Alasdair Alpin MacGregor. (Methilen. x2s. 6d.) IN his Preface, Mr. MacGregor informs his readers that his Family Saga, originally planned for three volumes, looks like spreading to five. This third volume, which deals with his schooldays in Edin- burgh, reinforces the impression made by the first two, that he could with advantage have made a one-book job of it. There are here some good, salty pages of direct reminiscence—of the Mac- Gregor family's arrival in Edinburgh, their various friends, the eccentricities of the clan-struck paterfamilias—but these are padded out with very insipid descriptions of Edinburgh sights, and re- tellings of the old, old stories of Deacon Brodie, Jenny Geddes and the rest. Some lofty generalisations about war and Christianity,
some cheap and not very well-informed gibes at the General Assembly and the Scottish Bar, some appreciative references to Mr. MacGregor's other writings have alienated one reader's sympathies others may be less thin-skinned.
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