Night Song of the Last Tram - A Glasgow Childhood

Robert Douglas

From Shelf: Find the Connection. Answer: Glaswegian authors

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 the few photographs of him and mourned our lost relationship. Unfortunately, he survived and came home.

A wonderfully colourful and deeply poignant memoir of growing up in a 'single end' - one room in a Glasgow tenement - during and immediately after the Second World War. Although young Robert Douglas's life was blighted by the cruel if sporadic presence of his father, it was equally blessed by the love of his mother, Janet. While the story of their life together is in some ways very sad, it is also filled with humorous and happy memories. NIGHT SONG OF THE LAST TRAM is a superb evocation of childhood and of a Glasgow of trams and tenements that has long since disappeared.