Glasgow by Tram

JOHN Hume, respected industrial historian, academic and former inspector of historic monuments in Scotland, has delved into his photographic archives to take readers on a journey of delight into a Glasgow that still had its soul and its famous trams. A young John cycled, with his camera, across the city in the years before the last tram ran in 1962 to record a world that was swept away by the planners just as soon as they could scrap the trams, a process which John laments in his heartfelt introduction. With colour covers and superb full page black-and-white pictures between them, John depicts the trams on cobbled streets of tenements, with myriads of small local shops, too, and with cars, commercials, buses and trolleybuses keeping the trams company. This is not just a record of the Glasgow trams in their dying years, but a record of a city that has disappeared, and, in John’s opinion, been replaced by nothing better. If you knew Glasgow and its wonderful trams, then this is for you: if you didn’t, it’s just the ticket to take you back in time when Coronations, Cunarders and Standard trams ruled the city streets.

Stenlake Publishing Limited, www. stenlake.co.uk, 57 page, softback, £11.95