'The Clyde is not the first river one thinks of in connection with Joseph Conrad – the Congo perhaps, or one of the fever-ridden mangrove-swamp streams of the East Indies – but not the Clyde. Not even the most prejudiced Edinburgh imagination surely can see Glasgow’s river as the “Heart of Darkness”. But Glasgow and the Clyde had their part in Conrad’s life and work and this connection with the Clyde, its ships and its people, is less well known than it might be. As a writer of the sea Conrad could hardly fail to depict the Scots who built and manned so many of the world’s ships. As a mariner trained in sail Conrad had no particular love for the steam engine, as his friend the Glasgow-born artist Muirhead Bone wrote in an obituary appreciation: He had none of a Kiplingesque enthusiasm for material powers – with him it was Man and the Elements, with the apparatus always a bit inadequate.'