Night Song of the Last Tram - A Glasgow Childhood

Exquisite … a beautiful paean - Sunday Times

His prose is direct, pacy, uncluttered … engaging, deftly written and honestly remembered - Herald

NIGHT SONG OF THE LAST TRAM is a simply written book and all the better for it … It recreates stunningly clear memories of a Glasgow childhood … At the age of 66, Robert Douglas has written his first book - I cannot believe it will be his last. - Daily Mail, Scotland

A well-written slice of social history delivered directly by an eyewitness - Independent on Sunday

It has been a while since a book has reduced me to both tears of laughter and sympathy, but Robert Douglas managed it with NIGHT SONG OF THE LAST TRAM. - Journal, Newcastle

It is as a record of the old Glasgow spirit that this book is especially worthwhile. - Sunday Herald

The portrait of his mother is beautifully done … and her loss (through breast cancer) when he was still very young is heartbreaking: it brings tears to my eyes now just writing about it. Douglas has real skill in conveying experience and his use of the Glasgow vernacular lends an extra poetry to the writing. A quite exceptional autobiography. - Publishing News, Book of the Month, November

Told with a direct, unsentimental honesty … a vividness that makes them real. This is a remarkable, deeply moving autobiography. - Cumberland Times

Robert Douglas retired, aged fifty-five, in 1994. He intended to paint, write short stories and lie about the house watching old films. A one-off article he wrote about six weeks spent with a condemned man in Bristol prison led to him being told ‘You should write.’

His first book - the bestselling NIGHT SONG OF THE LAST TRAM - is centred around his Glasgow childhood and became the first book in the popular trilogy detailing his life as a miner, dock worker, doss-house resident, soldier, prison screw - and survivor.

He hasn’t painted for years.