Ah B'lang Tae Glasgow

Hospitalised with a broken back (compounded with Tuberculosis) at the age of three, John McBarron (“Barney”) relates his rite of passage in Glasgow’s poverty-stricken East-end. Emerging after four years of treatment in the years leading up to World-War II, all of the gritty reality, violence, yet indefatigable humour that is woven into the ‘Glesca’ cultural fabric is recorded faithfully.

In a not-too-distant world that had no Television and little radio, ‘ra peepul’ relied on their own self-made entertainment, the occasional cinema trip, but especially the weekly tribal battles known as the ‘fitba’ and ‘ra dancin’. Alternately moving and laugh-out-loud funny, the author perfectly conveys the mood of the times and the character and spirit with which every Scot can identify.