Glasgow Almanac - An A-Z of the City and its People

In the work that has been judged the finest of his later novels, (printed here in Bennett's corrected version) Arnold Bennett gives us an unfogettable portrait of a miser and his wife. Henry Earlforward is a second-hand bookseller with a passion for money. He marries Violet Arb, a widow with a fortune of her own, yet he is eaten up by fear and greed. Set against the dark forces of avarice is the Earlford's maid, Elsie, whose love of life, generosity of spirit and warm humanity give Riceyman Steps a fine balance between hopelessness and optimism.

'I closed the book at seven in the morning after the shortest sleepless night of my experience ... there I had "Bennett triumphant" without any doubt whatsoever' - Joseph Conrad

In this vivid account, the author punctures some generally held assumptions: despite slaughter and famine, the province on the eve of the Plantation was not completely depopulated as was often asserted at the time; the native Irish were not deliberately given the most infertile land; some of the most energetic planters were Catholic; and the Catholic Church there emerged stronger than before. Above all, natives and newcomers fused to a greater degree than is widely believed: apart from recent immigrants, nearly all Ulster people today have the blood of both Planter and Gael flowing in their veins. Nevertheless, memories of dispossession and massacre, etched into the folk memory, were to ignite explosive outbreaks of intercommunal conflict down to our own time. The Plantation was also the beginning of a far greater exodus to North America. Subsequently, descendants of Ulster planters crossed the Atlantic in their tens of thousands to play a central role in shaping the United States of America.

This massively popular series, first released in 1937, tells the story of our islands in a straightforward, chronological narrative. Carter and Mears’ writing is fast-paced, muscular and direct, and covers the matrix of British history including overseas events, the arts, religion and major social changes.

Updated and revised by an expert hand, this series is being revived at a time when the failure of our schools to provide a connected, fact-based sense of the events that defined our nation, is being rightly and increasingly lamented by politicians, parents and the media. Volume VI focuses on expansion abroad during Victoria’s reign, and the triumphs of science and industry that allowed Britain to maintain its position, established in the Georgian era, as the world’s great economic power.