Author Archives: ed

Ed Glinert, legendary tour guide, historian and public speaker, here.

A very merry Christmas to all our customers, past, present and future.

I’m not doing so many public walks right now because I have a major deadline approaching to finish “Manchester: The Biography”, the first ever epic, detailed, accurate history of the city!, out in all good bookshops in October. You always wanted to read a history of Manchester that treats the city as respectfully as Peter Ackroyd has in his “London: The Biography” and Simon Sebag Montefiore with his history of Jerusalem? Well this will be it. 
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Too cold to go on a guided tour? Then book Ed Glinert, one of the country’s best-informed and most entertaining and speakers. Glinert can talk on all things Manchester, Liverpool and London, as well as hundreds of fascinating topics. For instance this is what Glinert will be speaking on over the next few months on cruise ships.

The Story of Motown.
American Presidents in Trouble.
The Making of the film Casablanca.
The History of Hangings.
Spies & Spooks: The History of British Espionage.
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As one of Britain’s most experienced public speakers, an Arts Society lecturer and regular cruise ships speaker, Ed Glinert has an endless retinue of talks, many with a Manchester theme, to give. 
His most recent additions are:
* The Making of the film Casablanca.
* Alan Turing: Tortured Genius of the Computer Age.
* Brilliant Orange: The History of Dutch Football.
* Marx & Engels in Manchester.
* Diamonds Are Forever.
* The Skyscrapers of New York.
* The Greatest 100 Songs of the 20th Century.
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Coming to the North: Manchester, Liverpool, Cheshire, Yorkshire Peak with a group – U3A, social club, historical group, football fans?
Then book an eye-opening coach tour hosted by an official effortlessly entertaining North-West coach tour guide.
We have so many to choose from: the Great Treasures of Manchester, Wild and Wuthering West Yorkshire, L. S. Lowry’s sights, The Beatles’ Liverpool, Chi-Chi Cheshire, the History of Manchester United…
Phone 07769 29 8068 and ask for Harry Crawley.
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This is Manchester, one of the world’s greatest music cities. The thing is, where Liverpool can only offer the Beatles, we have The Smiths! And Joy Division, The Fall, Oasis, New Order, Buzzcocks, John Cooper Clarke, Happy Mondays, the Stone Roses, the Hollies and, can you believe it, Van Der Graaf Generator. Now that really is a legacy. Match that New York!
So, if you are coming to Manchester, from Venice Beach, Venice or Little Venice, book a private music tour with Mojo’s Ed Glinert, co-author of Fodor’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Traveller series, 40 years a music writer and the country’s most prolific tour guide.  
* PS. He loves the Beatles really. Well, A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, not so much Abbey Road, natch, and does the most interesting Beatles tours in Liverpool as well.
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That’s it, folks, for now.
The John Rylands Library is undergoing some serious building work till about March 2025. Visitors can still enter, but only in small numbers and can only go into the Reading Room. It really does need an Ed Glinert or a John Alker to explain the statues and why they’re there, so please hang on!
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Manchester is now the up-coming destination for city visitors, overseas groups, the U3A, political organisations, football fans and so many others looking for a holiday or visit that’s infinitely more interesting than lying on a beach or playing golf. We have just spent 3 days hosting talks and tours with Sudbury U3A. So book with us, the city’s official tour guides, led by Ed Glinert, Manchester’s leading historian, veteran of 5,500 local tours, for a tour or package that will maximise your visit, thrill you with fascinating history and open up the world’s first and leading industrial city – whatever your field of interest.
* Radical Tours: Eye-opening stories on the trail of the Pankhursts, Marx & Engels, Peterloo, the fascist Mosley…
* Hacienda-era Music: Tours covering the Smiths’ Manchester, Joy Division’s Manchester, Tony Wilson’s Manchester, Manchester in 10 Songs, and the Hacienda era tour itself
* The Making of Manchester: How a “mere village”, in the words of Daniel Defoe, became the world’s first industrial city, leading the way with so many firsts and inventions, from the world’s first railway to vegetarianism; from splitting the atom to the first computer. 
* Cultural Tours of Manchester: The newspapers advertise these for Stratford-upon-Avon, Bath and Oxford, but miss out Manchester. Why? We explore the Manchester of Dickens, the Halle, De Quincey, the Pre-Raphaelites, Elizabeth Gaskell, Anthony Burgess and Lowry.
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As Manchester’s leading historian and most prolific tour guide, I am approaching both Bee Network/Transport for Greater Manchester and Andy Burnham’s mayoral office to see if they have the imagination to name the Metrolink lines in a way that will do Manchester proud.

At the moment we have Metrolink transport confusion in Manchester. Two tourists stopped me the other day at Deansgate-Castlefield station and asked where they could catch the “Navy Line”. That foxed even me. I asked them where they were going and they said “Victoria”. “That platform over there,” I informed them. But “Navy Line”? Eh? If that’s the best Metrolink/TfGM can do, it’s not good enough.

As for names, for now, the public talks about the “Bury Line” or the “Airport Line”. Factually correct, but boring. If Bee/TfGM renamed the lines, it would reap success in so many ways:
• Usage would increase dramatically as new customers, enticed by the scheme and attracted by the names, chose to use Metrolink, maybe for the first time.
• It would help locals and visitors use the system. (Who’s ever heard of the “Navy Line”?). Tourists would quickly take to the system.
• There would be increased civic pride in Manchester and its history.
• It would lead to nationwide publicity in the national press and media.
Using my unrivalled knowledge of Manchester and its history, and my concern for local civic pride, I have worked out the perfect names for the Manchester Metrolink lines.
Here are the current lines, my proposed names and why.
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So whether you live in Bury, Basingstoke or Bermuda, if you live or are coming to Manchester, book a tour with Ed Glinert, Manchester’s best informed and wittiest historian, Britain’s most prolific tour guide, Arts Society lecturer, cruise ships speaker, Penguin Classics editor, renowned author…and a general authority on anything worth knowing –  architecture, art, football, Jewish history, literature, music, politics, religious history…all the important stuff and a bit more.

These are tours with no “Rolls met Royce at the Midland Hotel” canards.
No “the 3 stripes on the city’s coat of arms are the 3 rivers of Manchester” nonsense.
No “the pillar box on Corporation Street is the one that survived the 1996 bomb” rubbish.
No “Mamucium was the city’s original name” idiocy.
Proper history! Wit, depth, analysis, humour, information…
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We represent the Blue and Green Badge guides of Manchester, the only group of North-west guides who can offer a full range of tours and talks in Manchester and Liverpool on everything – from the Pankhursts to Hacienda-era music tours and the Beatles’ Liverpool; from sights and sites associated with Alan Turing, Friedrich Engels, L. S. Lowry and the Pre-Raphaelites to the glories of Manchester’s Victorian architecture, the horrors of slavery, the drama of Peterloo, Britain’s first canals, industry, science, cotton, Ancoats, Angel Meadow, Strangeways…
Perfect for visitors, tourists, locals, private groups, clubs, barmitzvahs, hens, stags, solo travellers…
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