Growing up in the Gorbals
The Ralph Glasser Omnibus
Ralph Glasser

Category Autobiography Pub Date March 2006 ISBN 1 84502 082 0 Extent 640 pp. Price �9.99 Format 198mm x 129mm, paperback

Growing Up in the Gorbals describes Ralph Glasser's impoverished childhood and adolescence in Glasgow's slum tenements. This is an astonishing and moving story about growing up in a world which no longer exists. The friendships, the families, the camaraderie and the heartaches all paint a vivid picture of the times and Glasser shows a profound understanding of the people he writes about. This is also a story about the universal human condition which could have been set anywhere and about what it is possible to achieve with a clear vision and a lot of determination. And following on, the Gorbals Boy at Oxford takes him, with a scholarship, to Oxford, into the army, and back to wartime Oxford. With Gorbals Voices, Siren Songs, Ralph Glasser concludes his brilliant autobiographical sequence, venturing in to the perplexing, wayward world of post-war London. '. . . a classic . . . he caught both the people and the place . . . and there are passages which stand comparison with Zola and Gorky' The Observer AUTHOR INFORMATION Ralph Glasser spent his childhood and adolescent in the Old Gorbals of Glasgow. After years of night study he won a scholarship to Oxford. A psychologist and economist, he was concerned for many years with development problems, mainly in the Third World, campaigning against the destruction of traditional communities.