Property and Power in a City

This book is concerned with one kind of property - privately rented housing, in one city - Edinburgh, and with those who, over the past century or so, have been able to accumulate, control and dispose of it. The book reveals the substantial and multi-faceted power of landlords over the last 100 years, and of the class of small-scale capitalists who dominated this type of investment as well as the city's politics over the period. Despite their contribution to the political success of Mrs Thatcher's "new" brand of conservatism, the material prospects of these small rentiers seem to be in terminal decline.