Robert Douglas (2005) Night Song of the Last Tram:

Robert Douglas (2005) Night Song of the Last Tram: A Glasgow Childhood. I wasn’t really looking for this book, but it found me. I’ve enough to read; too much to read, but I couldn’t put it down. It peaked out at me from the library stacks, beckoning me over. The opening:

‘If my father…had been killed in North Africa or Italy during the Second World War I know that for the rest of my life I would have looked at a few photographs of him and mourned our lost relationship.

Unfortunately, he survived and came home.’

That set the tone. I read the book in one sitting. It’s right up there as one of the best along with Ralph Glasser’s (1986) ‘Growing up in the Gorbals’. A beautiful book that I wish I’d written.