Leith was trying to improve itself. Someone somewhere had decided to give it a bit of dust and a wash. It boasted French-style cafés and wine bars, studio flats, delicatessen. But it was still Leith, still the old port, an echo of its roaring, bustling past when Bordeaux wines would be unloaded by the gallon and sold on the streets from a horse and a cart. If Leith retained nothing else, it would retain a port´s mentality, and a port´s traditional drinking dens.
This seems a bit dated (this book is from 1987). Being to Leith myself twice over the last couple of years and having seen the modernized version of this part of town, I didn´t get the impression that Leith kept a whole lot of its old port mentality.
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