God and Maggie
A view from The Mound, halfway between Edinburgh's old and new towns.
It's an area full of charm, with a whiff of the past. You can almost smell Miss Jean Brodie's prime.
The Mound is also home to Edinburgh University's School of Divinity and
the General Assembly building of the Church of Scotland.
When Pope John Paul II came to Scotland in 1982, he was brought to this courtyard and, in the shadow of John Knox, given a rather frosty welcome from the Church of Scotland Moderator. It's here too that Margaret Thatcher came to deliver a lecture on the virtues of monetarism. Naturally, her speech was forever after referred to as "The Sermon on the Mound".