OXGANGS - A Capital Tale Volumes 1 and 2

'Am I wrong to think that we delighted in living there? No delusions are more familiar than those inspired in the elderly by nostalgia, but am I completely mistaken to think that living as well-born children in Renaissance Florence could not have held a candle to growing up within aromatic range of Tabachnik's pickle barrels? Am I mistaken to think that even back then, in the vivid present, the fullness of life stirred our emotions to an extraordinary extent? Has anywhere since so engrossed you in its ocean of details? The detail, the immensity of the detail, the force of the detail, the weight of the detail—the rich endlessness of detail surrounding you in your young life like the six feet of dirt that'll be packed on your grave when you're dead. Perhaps by definition a neighbourhood is the place to which a child spontaneously gives undivided attention; that's the unfiltered way meaning comes to children, just flowing off the surface of things. Nonetheless, fifty years later, I ask you: has the immersion ever again been so complete as it was in those streets, where every block, every backyard, every house, every floor of every house — the walls, ceilings, doors, and windows of every last friend's family apartment — came to be so absolutely individualised? Were we ever again to be such keen recording instruments of the microscopic surface of things close at hand, of the minutest gradations of social position conveyed by linoleum and oilcloth, by yahrzeit candies and cooking smells, by Ronson table lighters and venetian blinds? About one another, we knew who had what kind of lunch in the bag in his locker and who ordered what on his hot dog at Syd's; we knew one another's every physical attribute — who walked pigeon-toed and who had breasts, who smelled of hair oil and who over salivated when he spoke; we knew who among us was belligerent and who was friendly, who was smart and who was dumb; we knew whose mother had the accent and whose father had the moustache, whose mother worked and whose father was dead; somehow we even dimly grasped how every family's different set of circumstances set each family a distinctive difficult human problem…’ 

Philip Roth, American Pastoral'

Through hundreds of detailed vignettes, illustrations and photographs, OXGANGS - A Capital Tale volumes 1 and 2  documents the daily life, family dynamics, and the physical building of the estate. It is the absolute authority on how the community evolved from a newly built 1950s public housing estate into a bustling Edinburgh suburb, Peter Hoffmann’s deep-dive chronicle is the gold standard, a seminal work providing a baseline for all future writing about the community.

The books describe what life was like for a boy growing up in 1960s Oxgangs on a council housing estate in the lea of the Pentland Hills. It is regarded as the author’s signature work, his magnum opus. It specifically zooms in on the stair culture at 6 Oxgangs Avenue telling the everyday story of the 16 adults and 25 children who lived at 6 Oxgangs Avenue between the years 1958 and 1972.  

As the African proverb says It takes a village to raise a child which is exemplified in the two volumes as told through a series of over 200 vignettes with many illustrations and photographs, the books paint a picture of one family living alongside seven other families in an atypical Edinburgh council stair.

In describing the social history of the era, the author paints a portrait of the early days of Oxgangs and the development of the area capturing the day-to-day life of the period.  It’s a capital tale of  a young Edinburgh community and of a stair of people as seen through the eyes of not just the author, but also through the eyes of many others who lived in Oxgangs too.

In the books, Oxgangs becomes a character in its own right providing a sense of place, unique atmosphere, sights, sounds, cultural identity, dialect, customs, clothing, eccentricities and local colour, painting a vivid, detailed, and comprehensive picture of community life over several decades.

As a genre of social history it focuses on a highly specific aspect and area of memory, place and research to reveal larger universal truths - a local story but one with universal themes of growing up too.