Bunnets ’n’ Bowlers

About the Book: 

Glasgow's famous shipyards built great battleships and cruise-liners, they employed thousands of men and created a unique community. In a job that was always dangerous and physically demanding the 'bunnets' (skilled workers) found ways to keep cheerful, whether it was performing magic tricks, playing football, making fun of the 'bowlers' (bureaucratic foremen) or starting their weekend drinking early. Life in the shipyards was hard but ex-workers, including poet Brian Whittingham, look back on those times of camaraderie with nostalgia. 'Bunnets 'n' Bowlers' is an entertaining, uplifting and, at times painfully, realistic poetic description of a way of life that is now gone.

Reviews: 

This paperback celebrates the Clyde shipyards in their heyday - not achieved through rose-tinted glasses but via the often gritty recollections of those who spent a large part of their lives in these very shipyards. SCOTS MAGAZINE

About the Author:

BRIAN WHITTINGHAM, born and living in Glasgow, is a poet, playwright, fiction writer, editor and creative writing tutor. In 1994 he took over the Yaddo Artists Colony residency, and in 2000 he won first prize in the Sunday Herald Short Story Competition. His poems and stories have been widely published in anthologies and magazines. A former steelworker/draughtsman, he performed his steel-working poems as part of the BBC's 'Ballad of the Big Ships Live' in Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall in 2007. He has performed and lectured in the UK, Europe and the USA, in places as diverse as beaches, universities, prisons, pubs, schools and colleges. He is currently a lecturer in creative writing at Glasgow's College of Nautical Studies.