Evening News journalist John Gibson gives the thumbs-up to broadcaster, writer, raconteur and actor Peter Ustinov, promoting his book 'My Russia' in Edinburgh in August 1984.Evening News journalist John Gibson gives the thumbs-up to broadcaster, writer, raconteur and actor Peter Ustinov, promoting his book 'My Russia' in Edinburgh in August 1984.
Evening News journalist John Gibson gives the thumbs-up to broadcaster, writer, raconteur and actor Peter Ustinov, promoting his book 'My Russia' in Edinburgh in August 1984.

17 photos taking you back to Edinburgh in 1984

While the science fiction of George Orwell imagined a bleak, dystopian 1984 of totalitarian regimes, ‘Big Brother’ and ‘Thought Police’, the reality turned out not to be quite so terrifying after all.

Half a decade into the Thatcher era, the Capital was busy preparing to wave farewell to horse-drawn milk deliveries, toasting the opening of two exciting new shopping centres: Waverley Market and Cameron Toll, and welcoming a man who would turn out to be the last ever leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev.

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