The Monkland Canal

Guthrie Hutton revisits Lanarkshire's Monkland Canal which brought coal to Glasgow and kick-started the Coatbridge iron industry and, as the title suggests, made everybody involved plenty of money. Naturally the book contains lots of images of the grimier parts of Glasgow's East End and of the Monklands area of Lanarkshire, but a canal can be sylvan too. Today much of the canal route is underneath the M8 motorway and hence no longer open to navigation, at least not in the traditional meaning of the word! Guthrie Hutton is Scotland's acknowledged expert on the history of Scotland's canals and heavy industries.