Kirsty Wark guide for Glasgow – ‘My big old city’

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When I was a child, Glasgow felt like a mystical and strange place, with buildings impossiblely high, wrapped in the soot of the great industrial city. You could smell the foundations and factories, and people crowded the streets, many of them smoking, my father among them, a lawyer who travels to and from the city by train. We live 20 miles to the southwest in Kilmarnock, where Massey Ferguson tractors, the famous distilled Johnnie Walker whiskey and the first edition of Robert Burns Poetry published were built. But the trip to Glasgow was exciting.

Often, I stayed with my grandmother. As a gift, we would go to the cartoon cinema in Renfield Street, take the afternoon tea at Byres Road or visit the Kelvingrove art gallery. I remember walking with her along the long balcon Christ of San Juan de la Cruz. The painting terrified me: I was not more than eight years old. It is a place that I still love to visit.

As a student, I found my love for architecture walking in the city, looking at the buildings that took Italian, French, Dutch and Egyptian architecture and did it all of Glasgow. In each corner you can look at a building with an elegant detail; A window with a stained glass boat, a parchment carved in the sandstone, a glorious gargoyle or wrought iron in the founditions of the city. The story tells that New York planners were inspired by Glasgow, and the similarity is still there for me.

I buy ‘lasaga’ from Eusebi after a long day

Glasgow has always been elegant. I just made a two -part documentary about Scottish fashion and our starting point was 1955, the year I was born, when Christian Dior celebrated his first spring/summer fashion parade in the city. Another recent combination of Scotland and France is the fetish. The founders April Crichton and Orrely Forestier met while working in Sonia Rykiel in Paris and created a fun clothing brand in collaboration with local and French manufacturers. I often visit his workshop in an old school in Los Gorbals, on the southern shore of the Clyde River.

I like to stop outside the thymorous beasts: the windows are a riot; Surrealist assemblies of psychedelic fabrics that are dragged with dazzling insects, a lateral version of Toile de Jouy. Kate Bush is a big fan. More inside at the West End, I arrive at the University of the University, perhaps the most beloved ice cream shop in the city, and one of the many wonderful Italian establishments here. It has been owned by the Vetecchia family for four generations. I love thinking about my parents who go there in the 1940s when they were courting or, as my mother used to say, something unfortunate, “making a line.” Eusebi’s is another favorite stop. I buy his famous “yesterday lasagna” after a long day.

In the 70s, radical demolitions threatened the city. Now we are reinventing spaces. As a family, we are going to Cottiers, a theater, a restaurant and a bar in an old Victorian church that bears the name of the artist Daniel Cottier, who designed the windows and fresh stained. It still feels as if the building lives. As often as a drink becomes a meal: the French onion soup should not be lost.

One of the best things to live in a big old city are the treasures that are in the auction, and the big western auctions is one of my usual places. I love the persecution of a piece of fine porcelain and CRAIC is great. On our walls there are paintings of Scottish artists for which I have successfully offered, even a minor colorist couple. Do not skip charity stores in the West End, where I look for my glass glasses and the important perfect bowl for a little.

Valuing the auction, it is worth stopping in Ga Ga in Dumbarton Road. This establishment in southern Asia is from the Scottish chef of Malaysia Julie Lin: try the marine kiss with coconut butter or the Sichuan and the garlic aubergine. A night -cup on the way home is in omnipresent chip, a Glasgow institution. The walls are decorated by the deceased, Great Alasdair Gray and, installed in them, I have a malt, perhaps a highland park or an arran, before bedtime.

Kirsty Wark is a presenter in the first row of BBC Radio 4 and the host of the meeting. May 11 will be honored with a BAFTA scholarship at 2025 Bafta Television Awards