Book offers a taste of what makes Glasgow truly great

TO become properly acquainted with a city, we need the inside track on the sights, smells, and tastes that give any place its unique qualities. More than anything though, we need to get to grips with its personality and find out what gives a city its soul.

And that’s what Paul Trainer has done with the new book The Best of Glasgow.

Not just a basic listings guide, these pages take us to the hidden corners of the city, leads us through the areas that make up Glasgow’s own “villages”, and introduces us to people that have been shaped by the city and play a part in creating the unmistakable Glasgow buzz.

With interviews, well-researched features, new photography that brings the city to life, and even a cookbook section with recipes from many of the best chefs working in the city, The Best of Glasgow is a complete portrait.

It’s fair to say this this year might not have been the ideal moment to release a city guidebook, but the publisher, editor and writer Paul Trainer says that lockdown provided some surprising possibilities. “Like everyone else, I was struck by the absence of people in the city during lockdown,” he says. “However, I was also conscious of the fact that right through this year, there have always been things to do. There were always stories to tell.”

The slogan People Make Glasgow has never been as important as this year and Paul, a Dennistoun resident, has looked to celebrate the individuality of the city’s neighbourhoods, which he describes as “a patchwork of villages”.

Paul has a long history of working with guidebooks and magazines, with 12 years spent in Dublin. “When I came back, it felt like a great opportunity to reintroduce myself to the city.

“Straight from university I had gone from eating chips and cheese in Sauchiehall after the dancing to a different kind of city life.

“I moved back because I could see that spark of creativity happening.”

The past five years building up the successful Glasgowist website (www.glasgowist.com). “During the time that we’ve been building up a significant website readership, I’ve been struck by the connection people feel to the city, whether they live here, have lived here, have only visited or never visited, people feel a pull.

“I wanted to distil the personality

“There are some high-profile Glaswegians featured in the book too, people like Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand and Clare Grogan.

“I really enjoyed hearing their nostalgia-tinged enthusiasm for the city.”

The city has the starring role in the book, however and Paul is hoping it will allow folk from near and far to get to know the city of Glasgow better, maybe to plan and make the most of a future visit.

“The nature of city life is that people fall into patterns. People end up in the same network of streets, but hopefully this will give them a chance to branch out.

“And you know they always say that, in Glasgow, the best thing to do is look up because some of the buildings are astonishing.

“You get that opportunity to look at the city through fresh eyes. I’m hoping that people will find familiar favourites in the book but also, they might discover something that they never knew about the very place that they grew up in or the place they find themselves in.”

There has been so much uncertainty this year - and independent publishing carries a risk in any year – but Paul has the experience of last year’s 100 Best Restaurants Book.

“One of the website’s main threads is food and drink so we decided to look at the city’s successes there.

“With The Best of Glasgow book I got a lot of reassurance from talking to folk who have a resilient spirit and want to continue to do things.”

Paul adds that it was important to offer more than what he calls “inherited knowledge”,

“By that I mean we wanted to get away from simply offering the same places again and again. This year we’ve been able to take time to explore and see the city so clearly.

“We’ve been so time rich I’ve wanted to use that well.

“There’s been an opportunity to make the book something that offers the places and experiences that we really value.

I think we’ve achieved a 100% authentic guidebook that’s completely rooted here.”