Ralph Glasser

Ralph Glasser (3 April 1916 – 6 March 2002) was a Scottish psychologist, economist, advisor to developing countries and author of a highly praised autobiographical quartet.

Early life Glasser was born of Jewish parents in Leeds, but when he was only a few months old his family moved to a tenement flat in the Gorbals area of Glasgow, which had gained notoriety as one of the biggest slums in Europe. His mother died when he was six and his two older sisters quickly decamped, leaving him to be raised alone by his father, who had a gambling addiction. Glasser recalled the "recurrent struggle on the frontier of survival: mutuality and the informal economy".

Displaying a precocious intellect, Glasser studied the Theory of Relativity as a boy and attended a lecture by Albert Einstein when he was thirteen. Family circumstances meant that he could not pursue academic studies and he went to work first as a "soap boy" for a barber then as a presser in a garment factory. In his spare time he studied at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. He attended socialist camps but retained throughout his life a sceptical outlook about politically constructed utopias.

He tended to hide the fact that he was Jewish, in view of the prejudice prevailing in the society of his day, which "burdened every step of our lives" and resulted in the need "to bury it beneath some protective colouring, so that we might go our private ways like everybody else".

At Oxford Philip Toynbee tried unsuccessfully to recruit him to the Communist Party. After serving in the Second World War he resumed his studies, and met such celebrities of the time as Victor Gollancz, whose daughter he dated for a while, and Harold Laski.

Post-war years Glasser took another degree in economics at the London School of Economics and began work in public relations, the British Council and advisory roles for Asian and African governments. He met many famous people as his horizons expanded but he felt "the Gorbals at my shoulder always, like the Hound of Heaven". He moved for a time to a village in Italy which resulted in a book, The Net and the Quest and a documentary by the BBC. On the Council of Christians and Jews he worked with Father Tom Corbishley and Hugo Gryn.

Autobiography Growing Up in the Gorbals, the first volume of his highly praised autobiographical trilogy, was published in 1986. It was followed by Gorbals Boy at Oxford in 1988 and Gorbals Voices, Siren Songs in 1990. In his last book, Gorbals Legacy (2000), he looked back again at how his "Faustian Familiar" had moulded and influenced his path through life.

Personal life In 1965, he married the literary agent Jacqueline Korn. They had two children: Roland Glasser (1973), a literary translator from French; and Miranda Glasser (1975), a TV producer.

Works The New High Priesthood: The Social, Ethical and Political Implications of a Marketing-Orientated Society, Macmillan, 1967 Planned Marketing: Policy for Business Growth, Macmillan, 1968, A Nice Jewish Boy, Robert Hale, 1968 Leisure – Penalty Or Prize?, Macmillan, 1970, The Net and the Quest: Patterns of Community and How They Can Survive Progress, Temple Smith, 1977, Scenes from a Highland Life, Hodder & Stoughton, Town Hall: Local Government at Work in Britain Today, Century, 1984, Growing Up in the Gorbals, Chatto & Windus, 1986 Gorbals Boy at Oxford, Chatto & Windus, 1988, Gorbals Voices, Siren Songs, Chatto & Windus, 1990 The Far Side of Desire, Severn House Publishers, 1994, A Gorbals Legacy, Mainstream, 2000,