Come away in to St Andrew's House

Most of you who visit Edinburgh once in a while will have spotted St Andrew’s House gazing ominously down on you from its southern face on Calton Hill. Completed in 1939, the House now accommodates the Scottish Government within its geometric, monolithic confines. I’m no architecture buff, but along with the National Library of Scotland (right), the building always struck be as a louring instance of Scottish fascist architecture – an unfair pars pro toto I suspect, which undermines its creative participation in other genres. In this skimming view, curiously, I share a conviction with Donald Dewar, who found St Andrew’s House “somewhat fascist” – although one suspects, that may have more to do with the gathering gloom associated with the viperous former Secretary of State for Scotland, Michael Forsyth, who used to rest his coils within.

In commemoration of its 70 year berth, on their Youtube Channel the Scottish Government have posted a marvellously whimsical little demi-tour of the building. Including the swanky looking office where that fulminating radical, John Elvidge, plots the Break up of Britain(!) with his band of grey-suited desperadoes...