When you behold once more the medieval Gothic splendour of Glasgow Cathedral, an uncomfortable truth becomes apparent. We Glaswegians fondly portray ourselves as loud, vivacious, edgy, jaggy. We identify as Glaswegians first, then by our district: Parkhead, Bridgeton, Queen’s Park, Govan. Being Scottish is often only our third most important identifier. We are unapologetically chauvinistic in our Glaswegianism.

Every citizen is a self-appointed city ambassador, under an obligation — one no-one has demanded — to proclaim its virtues at all times, solicited or not. It is a sacred undertaking. Visits to Edinburgh become crusades.

Yet we seem curiously docile about our treasures. It is almost as though we have come to accept the ukases of Scotland’s cultural Sanhedrin, which tell us that Edinburgh’s cutesy birthday-cake comeliness — all porridge and sporrans — must always take precedence.

When you enter Glasgow Cathedral, you reproach yourself — and not for the first time. Here is the only mainland Scottish cathedral to have survived the Reformation intact. Few other structures in Europe dating from the middle of the 12th century have bequeathed to us so many of their original treasures, so whole and unquenched.

Why has it been so long since I last visited this place, where one cathedral is built on top of another; where stained-glass windows invite you to pull up a chair and cancel the next hour; and where four stone pillars, built in the 12th century, guard the spot where St Mungo lies?

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And that is before you even get to the terraced Necropolis beyond, perhaps the finest open-air museum in the UK. Is this just my West of Scotland paranoia, triggered by a month of self-gratifying and self-indulgent middle-class unctuousness about third-rate drama at the Fringe Festival, deemed important only because it is happening in August in Edinburgh? It is of no lasting importance whatsoever beyond the lifespan of a truffle-glazed baguette.

My guide for today’s tour is Neil Baxter: architect, savant, teacher, academic, author and unashamed Glaswegian apologist. And, oh boy, a raconteur. Mr Baxter raconteurs for Scotland. What was intended to be a languorous peregrination down Glasgow’s High Street begins and ends in the cathedral. The historic delights — and modern challenges — of........

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