Author Archives: ed

Ed Glinert here:
As the journalist who did more pieces (for City Life and Private Eye) on James Anderton, the former Greater Manchester chief constable who died on the 5 of May aged 89, than anyone, can I remind younger readers just how ridiculous he was.
When Anderton became chief constable of the newly-formed Greater Manchester Police in 1976 he quickly announced that he had a direct line to God and stated that he might be the living reincarnation of Oliver Cromwell. He sent coppers in motor boats flashing torches underneath the arches of the Rochdale Canal looking for men having sex with other men. He later denounced AIDS sufferers as “swirling around in cesspit of their own-making”. Continue reading →

• It’s Manchester’s greatest ever building, a 5-star hotel built out of the shell of the famous Free Trade Hall.
• It’s the world-renowned venue where Bob Dylan was booed, the Who were banned and the Sex Pistols changed the course of modern music.
• It’s where the great orators – Gladstone, Disraeli, Lloyd George Churchill – thrilled the crowds with their rhapsodies and rhetoric.

Hear the history, soak in the sleek style and lounge in its luxurious locations. Then, when the tour’s over, take tea and tiffin or a tipple in the Opus or Alto bar. What a great way of spending two hours! Continue reading →

This is Elizabeth Charnley, “fellow” Manchester tour guide. Elizabeth doesn’t do any tours, but is determined to stop New Manchester Walks’ Ed Glinert from guiding in Manchester. Why? Glinert has no idea. When he first discovered Elizabeth had qualified as a new guide a few years ago, he immediately offered her tours of Salford Quays, near where she lives. Her response was to expel him from the North-West Association of tour guides with a relish that was almost psychopathic in its execution even though she had never met Glinert before. It was as if this was the only reason she became a tour guide. She was shaking with rage. This was pure unintelligible, inexplicable, vindictive behaviour by a seriously troubled person. Glinert has appealed against this decision but is not allowed this basic justice. Continue reading →

* The next expert tour of John Rylands Library (and more) is on
Thursday 1 February 2024, starting at St Ann’s Church at 11.30am.
* To book, please press continue reading and follow the simple steps!
Here’s a taster:
The Reading Room of the John Rylands Library on Deansgate is lined with statues of leading figures from history in the fields of the arts and religion. They include one of Francis Bacon. Not the irascible Dublin-born painter, but the genius late Elizabethan/early 17th century philosopher and politician. Bacon was the first English intellectual to pick up on the Kabbalist notion that all knowledge could be contained under two headings, zero and one, thereby pre-empting computer algebra by over three hundred years. Continue reading →

This is Kate Dibble, “fellow” Manchester tour guide. Kate doesn’t do any tours, but she has spent the best part of the last 15 years trying to stop New Manchester Walks’ Ed Glinert from doing tours. Kate has been instrumental in banning and excluding Glinert from every single guiding group he has a right to belong to – Manchester Guided Tours, the rota to do Discover Manchester, the rota to do the Town Hall tour, the Guild of Manchester Tour Guides and the North-West Association of Tour Guides.
Why?
Because Ed Glinert is Jewish, and Kate and her friends don’t want a Jew in their circle.
Kate is now being investigated by Marketing Manchester, the British Guild of Tourist Guides, the national Institute of Tourist Guiding and various Jewish representative groups. Also, the press are keen on this, part of a much bigger story.
Well done, Kate! Continue reading →

This excerpt from Ed Glinert’s Manchester: The Biography on the death of one of the greatest footballers in Manchester history. 

Denis Law is the only Scot who has ever been crowned European Footballer of the Year. He was a great showman and one of the deadliest goal poachers the game has ever produced. As George Best once explained, “if a pass from Denis Law failed to reach you, it was odds-on that you were not thinking fast enough to be in the right place for it.” Law was born in Aberdeen, into abject poverty, Continue reading →

John Stalker dead; a sad day for Manchester as another chapter in the city’s history closes.

John Stalker was deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester in the 1980s, but that doesn’t do him justice. Stalker was good cop to Anderton’s bad cop. Where James Anderton, his boss, chief constable of the county, was the cult of the personality embodied, manic, maverick, out of control, obsessed with waging war on the population’s morals, a Northern version of the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Stalker was an old-fashioned down-to-earth, honest-to-goodness traditional copper, not in the farcical Gene Hunt mould but more Jack Meadows than Tom Chandler or Guy Mannion.
Continue reading →

Despite lockdown we are working flat out to provide a respite from the horrors of Covid with a host of Zoom talk-tours, devised by Ed Glinert, the North-West’s most energetic and best-researched historian. Here’s what we’re doing:

Ancoats * Angel Meadow * Beatles Liverpool coach tour * Cottonopolis
* Elizabeth Gaskell’s Manchester * Formidable Women of Manchester
* Hidden Gems of Manchester * Intellectual Manchester Pub Tour
* Liverpool’s Wonderful Waterfront * Manchester Architecture
* Manchester Music Coach Tour * Manchester and Slavery * Manchester in 12 Songs * Marx & Engels * Midland Hotel * Northern Quarter * Pankhursts of Manchester * Peterloo * Pre-Raphaelites of Manchester Art Gallery * Secret History of Manchester * Strangeways: No Escape *
Town Hall * Underground Manchester.

Press for more outside Manchester in Liverpool and London. Continue reading →

R.I.P. Nijinsky, King of the Kippax Continue reading →

**STOP PRESS** TOUR ON HOLD FOR OBVIOUS REASONS.
Hello to everyone who comes on our tours. We have a new system in place for tours of Chetham’s and the Cathedral. One reason why we have not been able to do tours recently is because the long-standing librarian, Michael Powell, sadly passed away last year. We are all still in a state of shock. Michael was much loved and admired.

The Library is now ready to welcome our expert tours again, but because it needs much funding to maintain its status and 15th century foundations, it has put a price on each visitor of £6.50 a head. All visitors on tours now have to pay this very reasonable charge, but on our tour you get Ed Glinert’s unrivalled knowledge of the building, its history…all told with Ed’s infamous wit and panache.  Continue reading →