Although Sue Stephen's quietly sensational new book Collector's Daughter - The Untold Burrell Story is more about the shipping magnate's dysfunctional family life than his trade empire, the revelations do require some re-thinking of Glasgow's most famous man of business.
Not that anyone has ever suggested Sir William, who famously made his money by building ships cheap in a slump and selling the fleet dearly during a boom, was a soft touch. However, the extent of his personal ruthlessness is startling, not least because it was often directed at his own daughter, whose life was blighted by his tyrannical behaviour and his wife's irrational resentment. In the view of Mrs Stephen, this amounted to abuse, which casts a retrospective cloud over Scotland's pride in Burrell's achievement.
The book has been flying off the shelves but is currently unavailable, apparently due to a re-ordering error by publisher Glasgow Museums, whose ponderous processes would have seen it go out of business years ago, if it was a business.
It's missed more opening dates than the Edinburgh trams and the Scottish Parliament combined, but hotelier Steven Macleod is promising that the permanent building site in Stirling's historic Spittal Street is finally going to open as the Hotel Colessio in "early July this year", in time for the Ryder Cup and the Commonwealth Games.
Macleod, who has devoted a lot of energy to wedding-only venues in recent years, claims to have sunk £10 million over four years into the neo-classical former bank and hospital building, which he admitts "has been beset by problems and delays".
He says: "I think it would be fair to say that this has been one of the most challenging projects I have ever worked on.
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