Recalling the successful ‘Glasgow Smiles Better’ campaign of the 1980s, Michael Meighan restarts his journey begun in his previous book Glasgow Smells. He takes us on a new trip through Glasgow of the 1970s and ’80s and revisits it in present times. It starts where Glasgow Smells stopped, in the late ’60s of Anderston, just as the last tenements were coming down and his family moved out to a ‘Corporation’ house on a posh ‘scheme’.

It evokes the humour of the time, of Matt McGinn and of Adam McNaughton. It has a wee laugh with the Aran sweater weekend folk singers. It captures the culture of the Glasgow pub and the ‘kerry oot’ as well as of Glasgow theatre and restaurants in the ’70s when Reo Stakis was the last word in gourmet dining.

It also follows Michael through a number of jobs, starting with Willie Logan on the Kingston Bridge and serving his apprenticeship in ‘The Pye’. He relates the demise of Glasgow’s heavy industry but how, helped by the Garden Festival and the Year of Culture, the city has renewed its faith in itself and continues to thrive with great hopes for the future.

235 x 165 mm | paperback | 96 pages | 40 b&w illustrations