Dancing in the Streets

This is Glasgow journalist Cliff Hanley’s sparkling, unsentimental and uproariously funny account of growing up in the Gallowgate and then Shettleston in the 1920s and 1930s and his working life as a radio broadcaster and journalist in the 1940s and 1950s. A natural-born raconteur with a marvellous ear for dialect, Hanley has an extraordinary ability to bring alive the people and places to give a vibrant snapshot of Scotland’s largest city. These razor-sharp observations of times log past cover a huge range of themes, from family life, art and showbiz to more weightier topics such as politics, sex, TB and what it was like to be a conscientious objector during the Second World when Hanley’s brothers and friends were all overseas serving in the armed forces. But the grittier episodes are always leavened with irrepressible humour, and the true Glasgow spirit shines through.