Located on the banks of the River Clyde, Glasgow was once the second
city of the Empire, producing ships, locomotives, cars and heavy
engineering for the world. Its docks would see huge numbers of exports.
But Glasgow is much more than this; it is a religious centre, with one
of Scotland's earliest churches, a centre for the Virginia tobacco
trade, a home of designers and architects, inventors and entrepreneurs,
artists and industrialists. It is that variety of talent, and the
melting pot of immigrants and other Scots, sucked into the city at its
peak that saw the phenomenal growth in wealth and culture that has left
the city with a legacy of fine Victorian architecture, and it is its
decline that has seen a legacy of remote council estates. However,
Glasgow has risen again, and is truly a vibrant city, thanks to its
self-promotion from Dr Michael Kelly's 'Glasgow's Miles Better' campaign
to its use in gritty film and TV productions, as well as its ability to
look at the past and preserve the best of the old, while producing some
of the most startling modern architecture outside of London. Michael
Meighan tells the story of Glasgow, from its drumlin days in the Ice Age
to the growth of the Church, its industries, its people and the
phenomenal expansion of the Victorian era and the legacy it has left us.
