"Aye but it's balmy," says Ryan Costello, my barber at House Martin, of the weather (8 degrees max). I am offered a good strong coffee followed by a better, stronger whisky – a peaty dram named Ileach – while my piebald two-week old growth is shaped into something resembling a beard.

House Martin Barbers, a hip man cave, is not to everyone's tastes – it makes little sense to visit without a Y chromosome – but it's a terrific introduction to macho Glasgow cool. Over the next few days I stroll among a veritable Gold Rush of bearded young men, and as the temperatures begin to plummet, I am so snug beneath my freshly topiaried pelt I have no need of a scarf.

Heritage jewels

While the Scottish capital of Edinburgh might win the civic beauty pageant, Glasgow is not without its own upscale heritage jewels. On a crisp morning beneath a pale blue sky, I stroll along the curving concentric circles of Park Circus, an entirely coherent precinct of sandstone Victorian terraces. Afterwards, I wind my way downhill through parkland bordered by the red sandstone pile of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

This is no mere provincial museum. It's crammed with works by Renoir, Rembrandt, Matisse and Dali. Many of the old masters and Impressionist masterpieces were bought in the late 19th-century by local collectors who made their fortunes when the city was an industrial powerhouse: the self-styled "second city of the empire".

Glaswegian band Roddy Hart & the Lonesome Fire have starred at the annual Celtic Connections festival, which began in 1994. Simon Murphy

Kelvingrove is also home to a collection focused on Glasgow's greatest gift to modernist architecture and design: Charles Rennie Mackintosh. At the turn of the century, Macintosh was working a seam all his own: a synthesis of Japanese, Scottish baronial and industrial influences; a little bit art nouveau, a little bit art deco. His masterpiece, The Glasgow School of Art with its fin de siècle furnishings and fittings, is set to reopen in 2019 five years after its library and studios were gutted by fire.

If Glasgow was not an industrial and trading powerhouse by the 1860s, the decade of Mackintosh's birth, his fertile imagination might not have found inspiration in such an eclectic range of influences. And he would certainly not have had access to the dedicated wood and metal workers he recruited from the shipyards on the River Clyde.


Glasgow has seen boom years – and busts. But there's a cheering continuity amid the chaos of the centuries. This was a city where the wealthy tobacco lords dressed ostentatiously and sponsored the arts, accumulating private art collections of their own. And when their luxuriant beards and moustaches got a little out of hand, there were always the equivalents of House Martin Barbers for a haircut, a shave and a tot of whisky.

The design tradition, too, finds ever renewing forms of expression; the Glaswegian talent for making is not easily subdued. I visit the cutting-edge hi-fi company Linn, on the outskirts of town. Although Linn places great stress on the quality of the source – its LP12 turntable has led the field for four decades – its top-of-the-range speakers produce sound best described as celestial. I'm given a demonstration. In the closing moments of Pink Floyd's Eclipse, the farewell track on Dark Side of the Moon, I hear, ever so faintly, an orchestral version of the Beatles' Ticket to Ride. "It was playing," a Linn technician explains, "in another studio when the track was recorded."

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is crammed with works by Renoir, Rembrandt, Matisse and Dali. Alamy

A more accessible example of cutting-edge Glasgow lies back in the Merchant City area. Young designers Ross Baynham and Pete Sunderland used crowd funding to start their business, Instrmnt, in 2014. Last year they opened a store in the hip Trongate district – a playground of bars, restaurants, specialist shops and boutiques. The visual focus of the store is a multipurpose day bed of Nordic inspiration, built from warm American walnut with cushioning of dove grey wool. But the crowd pleaser – the brand's essence – is a range of minimalist steel watches boasting Swiss movements, smart leather bands and affordable price tags.

Heaving venue

I spend the next night in the buzzy Finnieston neighbourhood of Glasgow's West End at Alchemilla, a lovely restaurant with pale wood and funky '70s-style fittings, and a contemporary Middle Eastern menu. At closing hour I skip with a few friends out onto Argyle street, keen to press on. Just across the road is the Ben Nevis pub – named after Scotland's highest peak – and as its doors open and close I catch the strains of a Celtic jig.

We step inside. The place is heaving. In one corner the players in a 10-piece traditional band of fiddles, pipes and drums, strike up a lively reel as the crowd submits to the driving rhythm. A man mountain with a tremendous red beard stands at the corner of the bar. He wants to buy me and my two American friends a drink. "What's your poison?" he growls.

"I'll have a Scotch," I reply. "You mean a whisky," he corrects me. "You like it peaty?" he asks. I shrug, and a glass appears at my elbow. It tastes a little like an incinerated house but I toss it down. "Another round?" he asks. We all clink glasses over the din, raising them to a fine and jolly Celtic connection.


Alchemilla in Glasgow has had food scribes reaching for superlatives. Kirsty Anderson

Luke Slattery is a Sydney journalist and author. Mrs M, his first novel, is published this month by Fourth Estate. $29.99. He travelled to Scotland with the assistance of Glasgow Life. peoplemakeglasgow com.au

Top refreshment spots

Alchemilla When this muted – at least from its blue-grey entrance – convert to the Ottolenghi creed opened late last year, it had Glasgow's food scribes reaching for the superlatives. The interior, with blond wood and bright orange counters, looks like the design child of Skandi and Latin parents. But the creative, zesty and hearty menu is all contemporary Mediterranean: try the small plate of octopus, blood orange and thyme, or comfort-inducing ox cheek parpadelle. 1126 Argyle Street

Singl End Close by the famed Glasgow School of Art, this homely cafe and bakehouse is a terrific place for a sustaining Scottish breakfast. I let comrades in arms tuck into the blood pudding, preferring instead the oven-baked casserole of eggs, homemade pork and fennel sausage with cannellini. The cakes, piled high on a table opposite the counter, are made with old-school generosity. Historically, a "singl end" was the tenement one-room apartment that countless Glasgow families once inhabited. 265 Renfrew Street

Drygate Brewing Co If it's a pre-concert beer and something simple you're after, then the bar and kitchen of Drygate craft brewery beckons. The craft beer range, which includes the hoppy Bearface Lager, heady (at 5.5 per cent) Gladeye India Pale Ale, and rye-spiced Axe Man IPA, comes direct to the table. Wine is served, too. Vegetarian and fish dishes are on offer, but the real stalwarts are dishes like pork, black pudding and chorizo burger with house slaw and triple-cooked chips. 85 Drygate

Dakota Deluxe Glasgow's first Dakota Deluxe opened in the city this year and is the latest venture from Ken McCulloch, the renowned Glasgow hotelier. The hotel, Darth Vader dark on the inside and outside, comes into its own after sunset when the elegant bar and champagne room are the place to be for a hot date on a cold night. The grill specialises in choice cuts – sirloin, beef fillet, flat iron steak – as well as Scottish lobster and market fish. 179 West Regent Street

Drugstore Social Modelled on an old-fashioned pharmacy, and trumpeting the goals of health and happiness, this light-filled corner café bar maintains strong relationships with local producers and makes a logical pit stop after the Kelvingrove gallery just two minutes away by foot. 67 Old Dumbarton Road

NEED TO KNOW

Celtic Connections celebrates its 25-year anniversary with an opening gala under the musical direction of pianist David Milligan, who performed at the first festival in 1994. Dates January 18 to February 4, 2018. For more see celticconnections.com