No Mean City

No Mean City is a 1935 novel by H. Kingsley Long, a journalist, and Alexander McArthur, an unemployed worker. It is an account of life in the Gorbals, a run-down slum district of Glasgow (now mostly demolished, but re-built in a contemporary style) with the hard men and the razor gangs.

Quotes

• Battles and sex are the only free diversions in slum life. Couple them with drink, which costs money, and you have the three principal outlets for that escape complex which is for ever working in the tenement dweller’s subconscious mind.
  • Ch. 4

External links

• Encyclopedic article on No Mean City on Wikipedia