Edinburgh is unique among Scotland's ‘ancient’ universities in having a university founded by the city, and not by the medieval church. Created in 1583, its purpose was never clear. Historian Michael Lynch expressed this ambivalence nicely:

In this chapter I will explore the centrality of the University of Edinburgh to cultural and social life in the city. Readers might cavil at that, on the grounds that it is, these days, not the only university in the city; that there is much more to ‘enlightenment’ than the university in question, particularly in the shape of cultural and professional institutes; and that, arguably, the University of Edinburgh has played a less than fulsome part in the cultural and intellectual life of the city, certainly for one considering itself the Tounis College.

UNDERSTANDING THE TOUNIS COLLEGE

The university, through Edinburgh University Press, published an ‘illustrated history’ in 2003, written by three of its most prominent historians: Michael Lynch, who dealt with the creation of the college; Nick Phillipson, who wrote about the making of an enlightened university; and Robert Anderson, the construction of the modern university. The book is short –just over 200 pages including pictures and illustrations –and published 20 years after its tercentenary, for reasons not given in the book, but possibly because in 1983, the university was going through one of its periodic financial crises, and thought that it could not commit to spending money on something as ‘impractical’ as a history. The late Michael Moss, University of Glasgow historian, in a review in the English Historical Review, observed that: