PROFESSOR Joe Farrell is right to complain that Glasgow has preserved so little of its great history (Letters, September 17).

Statues are an old- fashioned and ineffective way of telling the history of a city – and in any case, what have the likes of Peel, Gladstone and Sir John Moore got to do with the history of Glasgow and how it became the second city of Empire and Scotland's main source of wealth for 200 years?

I believe the city council missed a great chance to create a permanent celebration of Glasgow's great history, when the Head Post Office building was vacated and then stood empty and neglected and an eyesore for several years. Standing on the city's main square and right next door to the magnificent City Chambers, this building would have been the perfect venue for a dedicated Museum of Glasgow.

The city fathers should have jumped at the chance to purchase the derelict building, and then shown the imagination and vision to convert it into such a museum. Separate galleries or levels within the museum could have told the full story of Glasgow's huge involvement in shipbuilding, heavy engineering and other industries, in global trade and commerce, major political events, the effects of religion and various immigrations, and outstanding contributions in theatre, music and the arts, architecture, literature, and sporting occasions.

With modern technology all of these could have been properly presented and illustrated with exhibits, photographs and models, in a much more effective way than gazing up at a few ancient statues high above people's heads. Will we ever see such a museum in the future? I would like to think so, but I'm not holding my breath.

Iain AD Mann,

7 Kelvin Court, Glasgow.

I REGRET the regression (inadvertent one would hope) in your editorial to an ancient way of thinking as it drags Walter Scott, a writer of worldwide importance of whom all Scots should be proud, into tedious and old-fashioned Glasgow-Edinburgh divisiveness ("Make George Square fit for 21st century", The Herald, September 14). That column in the centre of George Square is a wonderful and striking part of Glasgow's past and, one hopes, future townscape.

The difficulty I have with the suggestion that George Square be remodelled is that it carries for me more than a whiff of what I fear is a tendency of Glasgow, while claiming to be improving itself, to hate itself. The city should take pride in what it has in George Square and work with its own history and identity as expressed by previous generations in what should be a fine streetscape. To attack the basic conception of the square as it stands is to forget that part of its problem is not its long-term configuration, but the fiddle-faddling approach to its "regeneration" of recent years.

One is reminded of the story when, in the 1960s, the then council planned to drive a motorway through Charles Rennie Mackintosh's masterpiece, the Queen's Cross Church, and the importance of the building was pointed out to a senior council figure. The response was that the road had to be built and the difficulty was that Mackintosh had chosen to build his church where a later generation would want to build a motorway. More fool, in that view, Mackintosh.

Those who seek to despoil George Square do not seem to care any more for Glasgow than those who thankfully were stopped from that destructiveness 50 years ago. They certainly care little for making the long-term best of its central square, marrying old and new.

Ian Brown,

2/1, 2 Darnley Road, Glasgow.

REGARDLESS of the future development of George Square, I hope that as soon as possible restoration work starts around the Cenotaph before the annual Remembrance Day service in November which focuses upon it.

Both sides, north and south, are now dominated by a hotch-potch of conifers including the dreaded Leylandii, obscuring the lateral views of what I think of as Glasgow's finest structure. From certain angles, all that can be seen are the noses and paws of the lions protruding from the greenery. All these trees, bushes and hedges should be removed, leaving just a few low-level non-intrusive shrubs.

Designed by Sir JJ Burnett in 1922 and unveiled two years later by Field Marshall Earl Haig of Bemersyde, the Cenotaph is a simple granite pylon flanked at either front side by the aforementioned lions. It was surely designed to be seen from all around. What is now available is either a frontal view from the main part of the square or from the City Chambers side to the east.

Even Glasgow City Council's website shows photographs, well out of date, which ironically illustrate what the Cenotaph once looked like, bereft of trees and bushes, and what it should look like after being tidied up. Although we are assured that the Cenotaph would not be affected by the proposed clear-out of other statues, which is good news, I hope that it can be restored as soon as possible.

Robert Stobie,

30 Millersneuk Avenue, Lenzie.

I NOTE the proposal to remove, perhaps permanently, the statues from George Square (as laid out in 1781 and completed in 1804); the first such statue to be erected was that of Sir John Moore in 1819 and the statue of James Oswald, one of Glasgow's Whig MPs in 1832-1847 was originally erected in 1856 in Sandyford Place and not moved to George Square until 1875. After the High School of Glasgow was driven out of the public sector in 1976, the school's plaques, commemorating its two former pupil Prime Ministers – Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Andrew Bonar – were rescued from Elmbank Street and taken to the new school building at Old Anniesland. So, perhaps, if all the statues are not to be returned to George Square, the statues of Lieutenant-General Sir John Moore, Thomas Campbell and Field Marshall Lord Clyde – all of whom attended the Grammar School of Glasgow which became the High School in 1834 – could also be re-sited at Old Anniesland.

In this connection it is also of interest to note that Sir John Moore was MP for Linlithgow Burghs in 1784-1790; that Thomas Campbell, who was co-founder of London University, wrote Ye Mariners of England and so on; and that Lord Clyde, who as a junior officer fought with Sir John Moore at Corunna in 1809, was also a victorious army commander during the Indian Mutiny after being such during the Crimean War. Anent the statues of Sir Robert Peel and William Gladstone in George Square, on the occasion of Sir Robert's installation as rector of Glasgow University in 1837, a banquet in his honour took place in a temporary wooden pavilion in what is now the Princes Square shopping centre, off Buchanan Street. One of the speakers was William Gladstone and one of the organisers was Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's father, James Campbell, who was knighted as Lord Provost of Glasgow in 1841 and whose first married home (1822-1828) was in George Square.

Dr Alexander S Waugh,

1 Pantoch Gardens

Banchory.

IT IS generally agreed that Glasgow, including George Square, is in a better state today than it would be if city councils, past and present, had not been tinkering with it over the years.

Iain AD Mann suggests (Letters, September 15) that Glasgow City Council, duly elected in a free vote by ordinary local citizens, be removed from the decision-making process and replaced by a committee of local citizens, with architectural taste, who will then submit their final plans for rubber-stamping and approval by the architecturally uneducated masses who elected the said council in the first place.

A circular argument if I ever heard one.

John Quinn,

1 Glenwood Road, Lenzie.