Books about Glasgow

[Sydney Rosewater]

All Stuart Murray's books are set in Glasgow and are really a fantastic read, in fact essential reading to anyone interested in the city.
They can all be found for sale at astoundingly reasonable prices on my website, I mean his website, found via the link below.

[My Kitten]

I've just finished reading a book called Night Song of the Last Tram by Robert Douglas about a boy's childhood in Maryhill.

It's a great read and I'd recommend it.

Anyone got any other recommendations?

Ta

I'll second that one, I bought it for my mums christmas and ended up keeping it to read. A good one for those of us in our early 30's as a lot of stories from your parents and grandparents are in there.

[marginalwalker]

All Stuart Murray's books are set in Glasgow and are really a fantastic read, in fact essential reading to anyone interested in the city.
They can all be found for sale at astoundingly reasonable prices on my website, I mean his website, found via the link below.

If Duncan Thaw was real........

[Toaster]

That's the paralell city of Unthank yer thinkin of chief, Provan is yet another weird paralell sorta place that crops up briefly.
Unthank's like a weird nightmare version of Glasgow where it's always dark. Sorry to be a pedant.

His Poor Things novel is set in Victorian Glasgow.

I sit corrected. Provan was actually somewhere else at the other end of the motorway, wasn't it? Long while since I read it. Love the bit where Gray lists all the plagiarisms in the margins. Actually I think a couple of them are actual inscriptions somewhere in Glasgow, must dig out the book again...

Poor Things is another good one.

[Ronnie]

Anyone interested in Glasgow history might enjoy:

Death by Design: The Truse Story of the Glasgow Necropolis

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI ... 71-4525200

Glasgow's Forgotten Village: The Grahamston Story

http://www.grahamston.com/index.html

[Fat Cat]

Death by Design is a good read. Also bought Heart of Glasgow by Jack House and it was very enjoyable. Other authors must have thought so because you read somthing and think "I've read that before, word for word".

[marginalwalker]

Mr Gray is writing again

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/61557.html

[engineer]

heard of a book written by a glasgow paramedic, anyone know of it?

[Schiehallion]

Also bought Heart of Glasgow by Jack House and it was very enjoyable. Other authors must have thought so because you read somthing and think "I've read that before, word for word".

Although I have to say, a lot of Jack House's stories come directly from "The Anecdotage Of Glasgow" by Robert Alison (1892). A book you can pick up from online book dealers and a 'must read' for anyone interested in old Glasgow. And I mean old! Fascinating stuff.

[Socceroo]

I was reading one of Jack House's books and he regularly quoted word for word large passages from James Cowan's articles in "From Glasgow's Treasure Chest".

A lot of the books about Glasgow from the likes of Jack House and James Cowan etc seem very much anecdotal. I wonder what they would have made of HG?

I reckon that a lot of the stuff on here is a lot more accurate than some of their assumptions.

Not so surprising really as HG has certainly become a very powerful internet resource with many like minded detectives with local knowledge that we can share quickly. We also have Scran, Google, nls and numerous other resources at our fingertips.

Most mysteries on HG these days are solved as quick as the double photographed lightning bolt !

[viceroy]

Obviously as you say neither Jack House nor James Cowan had the extensive information sources at their fingertips that we now have in the age of the Internet. Which is why many of the topics they addressed have been dealt with much more comprehensively in articles posted on HG than they would have been capable of doing.

But that doesn't automatically mean that much of what they actually put down on paper was inaccurate as such. It was probably just more limited in its scope. So, without necessarily taking issue with what you're saying, I wonder if you could give a couple of specific examples of the assumptions you are referring to.

[Socceroo]

I can give you quite a few detailed examples, but you'll need to allow me a wee bit of time to get out the books in question and give them a quick scan through.

With James Cowan, he never really put himself forward as the expert, he was more the inquisitor initially.

I think i made a comparison with HG and James Cowan on an early posting when i joined the forums, in which i quoted from James Cowan's books preface in which he explains his passion for Glasgow and his inquisitive nature which led him to want to learn about the city.

"From Glasgow's Treasure Chest" as you may be aware, is basically a collection of James Cowan's newspaper columns on discovering "Hidden Glasgow" as "Peter Prowler" from the Evening Citizen which he wrote in the early - mid 1930's, which was printed as a collected volume in 1950 or thereabouts.

In the book at the end of some articles, he has added at the time that the volume was being prepared, notes on what had been found out since the article was published. Also letters from readers who wrote into his newspaper with more information or correcting points etc were added.

The book as i said, came out in 1950 or thereabouts and was reprinted several times shortly thereafter. I do not think there has been further impressions since the early 1950's.

With regards to some of his articles on Mount Florida, Deaf and Dumb Institute, a hidden garden off Great Western Road, a building in Argyle Street etc, and a good few more, i have noted, not so much errors - i would like to call them more like assumptions which he has left a bit open ended until further information came to light.

With Jack House if you read an early edition of any of his Glasgow book's and then look at the same book - later edition you will find that information has been added and corrections made due to new information coming to light.

Again, it has been some time since some of Jack House's books have been revised / updated, so it is only natural that with the passage of time and the more openly available resources that things which may have been assumed, taken as the accepted history have been clarified and corrected.

There is one particular passage in one of his books where he gets into a bit of a muddle about the history of the Saracen's Head. I'll have a look for it later and post the bit i am referring to.

Jack House for me was a good story teller and undoubtedly he did a lot for preserving and promoting the history of Glasgow, and he no doubt turned a lot of people's interest towards the history of their City.

But for me a lot of his stuff seems to be the same material chewed over again and again. But it was a winning formula, so why not repeat it.

[ibtg]

A few people use/d the Old Glasgow Club (shameless plug! ) transactions as sources of information about Old Glasgow. Jack House mentioned the Club on a few occasions.

[viceroy]

As already mentioned, it mainly comes back to information not being as readily and as quickly available as it is now, hence the subsequent updating with additional items of information that came to light after initial publication. Also it is perhaps true to say that both James Cowan and Jack House probably had a somewhat cavalier attitude towards formal research in a way that might not be acceptable in this day and age. After all, they were writing for a reading public that was more interested in stories than bare facts – a sign of the times really.

I’ve got the James Cowan book too and I always enjoy dipping into it, even if some of what he says should be treated with caution. Certainly there are a lot of things in there that I never knew about until I got the book. The illustrations are great as well. And of course he was around at a time when much of what has been lost was still standing. Indeed he was around at a time when much of what we’ve still got hadn’t even been built yet.

As for Jack House, his shortcomings are perhaps more apparent to a later generation. But I will always have tremendous respect for the man. He was one of the few who were trying to keep the general public interested in Glasgow as a city during the 1960’s/1970’s, at a time when large numbers of people dismissed the place as a dump that deserved to be razed to the ground.

[Socceroo]

He was one of the few who were trying to keep the general public interested in Glasgow as a city during the 1960’s/1970’s, at a time when large numbers of people dismissed the place as a dump that deserved to be razed to the ground.

That is a very good point Viceroy, he certainly was up against it in the late 1960's and early 1970's at a time when everything would be getting flattened and the thought of renovation had not yet occurred.