Literary Scotland

10 The Clyde Valley and Glasgow47 glasgow32Perhaps the most essential novels set inGlasgow are Archie Hind’s The Dear GreeenPlace (1966) and Alasdair Gray’s Lanark(1981), but the city is steeped in literaryassociations. The Cathedral was whereGlasgow began, when the city was calledCathures, which is the name Edwin Morgantook as the title of a 2002 book of poemswritten while he was Poet Laureate of Glasgow.The Cathedral is described in Walter Scott’sRob Roy (1817). The Necropolis, beside theCathedral, is the Victorian cemetery, thecity of the dead. Among its literary residentsare William Miller, author of the nurseryrhyme, ‘Wee Willie Winkie’. The whole placefeatures memorably at the end of Gray’sLanark. South of the Cathedral, in theMerchant City, on the wall of a building inCandleriggs, is a plaque commemorating theCommunist teacher John MacLean, whoselife inspired tributes in poems and songs byHugh MacDiarmid, Hamish Henderson,Edwin Morgan and many others. In theAbove Glasgow Cathedral.pavement here, outside the Concert Halland the Scottish Music Centre, engravedin the paving stones just along from thisplaque, are four poems by Edwin Morgancommemorating the fruit and vegetablemarket that used to be located here and thepeople who lived and worked here. Southand west, Cathkin Braes and Rutherglenwere Morgan’s earliest favoured territories:his first book of poems was The Vision ofCathkin Braes (1952). The East End of thecity of Glasgow was traditionally workingclass,homeland for the city’s industrial poor.The Gorbals was the sceneof perhaps the most famousof all literary depictionsof GlasgowRobin Jenkins’s novel A Very Scotch Affair(1968) is largely set in Bridgeton, regardedby some of the characters as a ‘ghetto’ andJenkins’s The Changeling (1958) explores the