Glasgow

by Michael Fry

A one volume history of the great city of Glasgow from the Celts to Celtic by the controversial Scottish historian and biographer of Edinburgh.

Beloved, reviled – and not only by Glaswegians, Glasgow isn't just the industrial revolution nor the Victorian slums. Founded in the sixth century, its forebears pushed back the Romans. The roof of its cathedral, founded in the twelfth century, survived the Reformation. Its fifteenth-century university welcomed Adam Smith and the Enlightenment. It prospered from sugar, tobacco, cotton and slavery in the the eighteenth century, and saw the rise of the Red Clydesiders in the twentieth.

Its denizens have seen rise and fall, bombs and demolitions, their humour intact.

Now these people and this city play a pivotal role in Scotland's and the UK's future. It's time for a book that tells the story in all its complexity.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Scotland

448 pages, Hardcover

First published August 10, 1017

About the author

Librarian's note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Michael Fry was educated at the universities of Oxford and Hamburg. He is the author of The Scottish Empire (2001), How the Scots Made America (2003) and Wild Scots: Four Hundred Years of Highland History (2005). He has also written numerous articles on modern Scottish history and several political pamphlets. He has contributed to most major Scottish and British newspapers and has been a weekly columnist for The Scotsman, The Herald and The Sunday Times.

Reviews

[Keen Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

With the author being a failed Tory MP for a constituency within Glasgow, there are certainly times when his political convictions are on display, he seems to relish every failure or flaw within the Labour party in the city and beyond, and yet remains suspiciously mute on the corruption and humiliations in relation to his beloved chums within the Scottish Tories?...

Fry takes an approach on the city’s history which may not be for everyone, his style can be a little frustrating but it also has its good points too. We get some good background onto the Tobacco lords and then the men who benefited from the importing of sugar followed by cotton and how so much wealth was accumulated by reselling it on in many forms to the Netherlands, France, Germany and Italy.

This elite group clearly profited from slavery and poverty, but apparently their connections with slavery were never to the same extent as fellow greedy merchants in England or America, but we are assured this was not always through a good conscience and the trade still played a part in making the fortunes for many. We see how the US War of Independence changed fortunes and Glasgow and Scotland had to adapt and overcome, which they did branching into cotton and sugar.

We learn how the enlightenment impacted on the city and country. Again we see how religion plays such a damaging and diminishing role in people’s lives limiting their ability to think and act. By freeing themselves from the tyranny of religion Glasgow managed to grow and develop in ways which would not have been possible. A strong emphasis on education (Scotland had the most democratic education system in the UK) allowed them to think more, think for themselves as well as becoming more open to new and inventive ideas, and be a lot more creative and expansive in their thinking and actions.

This is a book which produces many fascinating facts and stats, during the year of 1913, a total of 23% of the world’s ships were built on the Clydeside, with one launched for every day of the year, in 1914 around 150’000 people worked in the mines producing around 39 million tonnes. We learn that in 1840 a royal commission inquiry lead to an Act of Parliament, “banning employment underground of women and girls, and of boys below the age of ten: up to the age of thirteen, the latter must no longer work more than twelve hour days.” It is no surprise to learn that the average age of a miner at death was 34, compared to 50 for factory hands. This shocking level of life expectancy was the reason why kids as young as 5 and 6 were down there to fulfil their productive potential.

This is often a history of the nation and west, central Scotland as much as Glasgow. It has plenty of dry moments, like the chapter on religion or the one on women, but it also has its fine and engaging ones too. Overall this was an interesting though patchy and uneven account which is readable and informative enough, albeit with a right wing slant.

[Jonnoley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Fry has managed to write a history of Glasgow that's both fascinating and frustrating to read. A failed Tory candidate (as he acknowledges), he carries his biases with him throughout the book and it's often the case that while his retelling of historical facts is engaging, his analysis feels incomplete and often at odds with the evidence he's just presented.

The book is organised by theme rather than chronology, which can make it difficult to put together a complete picture of the city at any one period, but does make it much easier to follow how in specific areas the city has developed on a larger scale

If you can handle the nakedly partisan conclusions he reaches, there's a lot to be gained from Fry's history, and many sections (particularly the chapters titled Image and Imagination) are very interesting

[Russel Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this. I like Fry, the iconoclast of Scottish history, but my least favorite of his works was on Edinburgh. I found it to be cursory and cloying, with too much of that Great Scots genre. Glasgow was very different, grittier and unsentimental and yet sympathetic. It was organized thematically, with enough on each topic (and they frequently overlapped) to refresh or improve upon a Glaswegian's knowledge but without delving so far into esoterica as to bore or overwhelm someone unfamiliar with the subject. He has his biases and he passes his judgments but I don't think they'd put off a fair-minded reader of another perspective. Highly recommended.