The heretical Glasgow Chronicler and I follow a lost burn through gangster edgelands, deserted cemeteries and Mossad conspiracies to the old mythical heart of the city. See also: Part 2: Gangster edgelands: In search of a lost burn Part 3: Saints and gangsters: In search of a lost burn.
It seemed a good idea at the time. Follow the course of a forgotten half-mythical burn as it threaded its subterranean way through the sacred and historical heart of Glasgow. The Glasgow Chronicler GC was the man. GC springs out of an Iain Sinclair novel right-down to the book market dabbling of rare editions.
He is a Glasgow street chronicler, writer, publisher, blogger, TV extra, literary correspondent, expert in Scottish politics and a legendary victim of Scottish tabloid vilification. He possesses a vast mind archive of stories, vignettes, witticisms, verses that allows him to quote WH Auden one minute, Abraham Lincoln the next. As an obituarist he is currently monitoring the health of the last remaining Spanish Civil War veterans.
If you are a man of significance, interest or character approaching the end of your rope GC will be lurking in your shadow making notes. He wrote an obituary for my father for a couple of the national newspapers my father fell into the interest or character category. GC is both myth and myth-maker, described in The Scotsman as a cold 19th century tramp given a coat by Oscar Wilde. He is a proud heretic of nationalist myths and proclaimed a quisling by the Scottish Daily Mail. He found himself in a media storm when the battle of Bannockburn was omitted from his book, Scotland: Things You Need to Know.
It mattered not that the omission was a pre-print edit blunder, nor that all involved in the book were Scottish, nor that the error was corrected. It was a conspiracy, Scotland was insulted and English infidels were to blame. Worse was to come. He skewered the myth-making Scottish nationalism and inaccuracies of the film, Braveheart , and suggested the Wallace Monument should become a Museum of Human Rights and Genocide, portraying the butchery committed by both sides.
