Undiscovered Scotland

 

Bill Paterson was born in 1945 in Glasgow. After three years as an apprentice quantity surveyor he decided to attend the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, going on to make his professional acting debut in 1967. His long list of film and TV credits over the intervening decades have made him an instantly recognisable figure.

In the preface to "Tales from the Back Green", Bill Paterson tells us that the tales of his boyhood that appear between its covers began life as BBC Radio Scotland radio scripts broadcast in 2003 and 2007. They were then published as a book in 2008. My overriding reaction on reading the tales was one of gratitude to Birlinn for publishing this edition in 2026, ensuring that the world evoked between the covers remains available to the widest possible audience.

The tales so eloquently told in this book transport the reader back to a world that, while still within living memory, can seem to belong to a different era, a world that was both better and worse than the one we know today: certainly a world that seemed in some ways simpler. The tales themselves are a fascinating mix. Here we read about childhood games set against the background of the fear of polio and the H-bomb; about the 1955 World Cup, an event rather better know in one small corner of Glasgow than anywhere else; about the twilight of the Glasgow trams; about Saturday night cinemas and Sunday morning churches; and more.

The publisher's description gives another view of the book: "Veteran actor Bill Paterson brilliantly evokes his 1950s Glasgow boyhood in this beautifully written and keenly observed memoir. It was a world full of intriguing characters and extraordinary events set against the background of the changes and challenges of the post-war era, among them the nuclear threat, the fading dominance of the Kirk and the arrival of Rock and Roll. Paterson was an astute observer of the dramatic developments which altered the face of Scotland’s largest city forever – such as the disappearance of Glasgow’s beloved trams and the demolition of swathes of old tenements to make way for new roads and high-rise flats, which pulled old close-knit communities apart. Poignant, witty, nostalgic yet true to the harsh realities of the era, Tales from the Back Green is not only a brilliant realisation of a time and a place but also a classic memoir of childhood."