Glasgow: The Autobiography

by Alan Taylor (Editor)

Overview

Glasgow: The Autobiography tells the story of the fabled, former Second City of the British Empire from its origins as a bucolic village on the rivers Kelvin and Clyde, through the tumult of the Industrial Revolution to the third millennium.

Including extracts from an astonishing array of contributors from Daniel Defoe, Dorothy Wordsworth and Dr Johnson to Evelyn Waugh and Dirk Bogarde, it also features the writing of bred-in-thebone Glaswegians such as Alasdair Gray, Liz Lochhead, James Kelman and 2020 Booker prize-winner Douglas Stuart. The result is a varied and vivid portrait of one of the world’s great cities in all its grime and glory – a place which is at once infuriating, inspiring, raucous, humourful and never, ever dull.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780278032
Publisher:	Birlinn, Limited
Publication date:	05/02/2023
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x (d)

About the Author

Alan Taylor has been a journalist for over 30 years. He was deputy and managing editor at the Scotsman, and for the last 15 years has been Writer-at-Large for the Sunday Herald. He has contributed to numerous publications, including The TLS, The New Yorker and The Melbourne Age, and edited three acclaimed anthologies - The Assassin's Cloak (2000), The Secret Annexe (2004) and The Country Dairies (2009).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

Prologue 11

1597-1700 An Archbishop's Seat 13

1701-1750 Pretending To Be Gentlemen 17

1751-1800 What To Do with Dung 25

1801-1850 Haunts of Vagrancy 31

1851-1900 City of Merchants 49

1901-1925 Fighting Women 77

1926-1950 Canoodling 97

1951-1975 Hello, Dali 139

1976-2000 Deserts wi' Windaes 199

2001- Blow Up 243

Bibliography 259

Sources and Permissions 265

Index 273

Editorial Reviews

a book with an enduring quality that you feel you will want to return to again and again ... the ideal book for anyone who lives or works in Glasgow, or has ever been to the city, or who has family roots there'

Undiscovered Scotland

These collected writings allowed me to dip here and there to uncover one unknown after another about my beloved Glasgow'

Frank McAveety

Alan Taylor deserves praise for his nous and nose …and has given it laldy'

The TLS - Stewart Conn

If you know and love Glasgow, you'll love it. If you don't, you'll love it. It's a fine treasure-house – and even Glaswegians may learn something new from it'

Scotsman - Allan Massie

[Alan Taylor] lays bare the city’s glorious contradictions. Glasgow: The Autobiography is his gift to us'

The National - Kevin McKenna