In a grimy lane in central Glasgow stand an abandoned brothel and a boarded-up saloon. Partners in hopelessness, they face the dismal thoroughfare. The building that houses them, like all its neighbours, is slated for demolition, and standing there you think: the sooner the better.

Yet from this doomed street in 1820, a failed businessman began a journey that ended in the creation of a country. He left his place of work in Brunswick Lane for the last time. A ship was waiting in the River Clyde, and he boarded with his family. Among them was his eldest surviving son, a 5-year-old.

The boy was John A. Macdonald.

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