'This might sound really foolish,' he confessed. Nicholls, from Southampton, said he had no idea that his dingy flatshare in Edinburgh would ever play a part in creating a phenomenon.

The film, in cinemas next Wednesday, is sure to add to that tourist mania when the star power of Hathaway and rising Brit actor Jim Sturgess brings millions more fans into the cinema and then up to Arthur's Seat.

Selling over a million copies since it was launched in 2009, the emotional and funny novel has been one of the most talked about books in years, and has already led to a tourism bonus for Edinburgh as fans visit the streets and landmarks to walk in the footsteps of Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley. It often refers back to their first encounter in the city, in a similar rented hovel in the very same street he lived in. They meet on graduation night and the tale follows the couple's lives and loves on the same date every year for the next two decades. His story is centred around two very different Edinburgh university students. Nicholls fell in love with the city when he spent a summer acting at the world-famous festival and shared a manky flat with 15 other people in Rankeillor Street. The film version of the publishing sensation is released in cinemas next week and Nicholls is delighted Edinburgh is as big a star of the movie as leading lady Anne Hathaway. That's because the real relationship which inspired the book is his love affair with Scotland's capital city. WHEN author David Nicholls spent a summer in Edinburgh just over 20 years ago, he began a romance that would eventually lead to the most popular love story of his generation.īut, as he is probably sick to the back teeth of telling people, that story - better known as best-selling novel One Day - is not about any woman he has ever known.

One day by david nicholls book