Author Archives: ed

This is a photo of Richard Sherwood, Head of Commercial Partnerships at Marketing Manchester. On Wednesday, August 9, 2023, Sherwood wrote to me, Ed Glinert, Manchester’s leading historian and most prolific tour guide at New Manchester Walks, to say:

“Dear Ed, It’s been brought to our attention from a visitor that there has been a complaint raised following a tour cancellation. We’re deeply concerned about complaints of this nature.”

So deeply concerned is Richard Sherwood, that it is now January 2024 and I still haven’t been told what the complaint is! This is gross incompetence on the part of the tourist board and is causing me monumental stress. Continue reading →

We wish you the season’s greetings and the best of health, and look forward to seeing you in the new year whether you be furloughed, locked down or locked up.
Many Manchester guides have given up. We haven’t!
We are starting the year with The Masterpieces of Manchester on Tue 4 Jan (Central Library, 11.30am), Southern Cemetery Wed 5 Jan (main gates, 11.30am), the Pankhursts Sat 8 (Emmeline statue, 11.30am), Manchester Music Sat 8 (HOME, 2pm) and Angel Meadow Sun 9 Jan (Victoria Station wallmap, 11.30am).
Yes, they’re free to registerfor, but as we’re not paid by the council, the tourist board, a multi-national company, or indeed anyone, we hope you can part with a few shekels at the end and throw them into the guide’s hat!
—Ed Glinert— Continue reading →

Always wondered what the fuss was about with David Bowie? After all, some of those albums the critics push – The Lodger, Scary Monsters, Let’s Dance – turn out to be filled with nonsense. Come on; those instrumentals on the other side of Low, which no one plays. That’s Bowie taking your for a ride. But it wasn’t always that way. He made remarkable music when he could be bothered. Continue reading →

Fellow walkers:
Our mobile/I-pad site ain’t working, but all is not lost.

The website is working perfickly on big computers, and everything can be booked on Facebook or eventbrite.

Meanwhile, we have the finest minds in computer-land – Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, maybe even Eric Gates – working on fixing it. Continue reading →

Our purpose as tour guides is to open up Manchester history with entertaining, expert, enlightening tours. Our tours are different from the traditional blue badge fayre. For instance we won’t tell you that Rolls and Royce met at the Midland Hotel (they didn’t), we won’t talk about the “three rivers” of Manchester (there are four), we won’t claim that George Orwell called Manchester “the belly and guts of the nation” (he never did), or that the pillar box on Corporation Street is the one that survived the 1996 bomb (it isn’t). The reason why we have to open up Manchester history is because a number of local Blue Badge guides have spent the last 25 years idiotically censoring it!  

You want to get to know Manchester better. Of course you do! It’s the world’s first industrial city (quiet, Birmingham), Britain’s second city (quiet, Birmingham)… Continue reading →

Alan Turing – Ancoats – Angel Meadow – Art – Architecture – Corrie – cotton – football – Free Trade Hall – Industrial Revolution – Midland Hotel – music – Peterloo – Pankhursts – radical politics – Salford Quays – scientific discovery – the Smiths – Tony Wilson – Victoriana…our expert tours.

And now, as a special present to you, the great Manchester public, many of our tours till the end of the year are FREE.

Hurry while stocks last and please register on Eventbrite. Continue reading →

Discover Manchester, the capital of the North, with the city’s official guides.

Next tours
* Wed 25 Sep, The History of Manchester in 20 Objects, 12 noon from outside the Mercure Hotel, Portland St.
* Fri 27 Sep, The Formidable Women of Manchester, 12 noon from the Emmeline Pankhurst statue, St Peter’s Square. 
* Fri 27 Sep, The Secret History of Manchester, 3pm from outside the Mercure Hotel, Portland St. Continue reading →

Sorry folks. No tour tonight. Only 2 sales. Very odd. We used to sell 30, 35, 40 a tour! Next date: Thu 13 July, TfGM travelshop, 6pm. Continue reading →

Picturesque black-and-white timber-framed waterside buildings, Britain’s first man-made waterway, and underground canals running through the Delph, a dramatic 52 mile system of caves and tunnels. And now the latest RHS garden, about to open, which will bring thousands to the village and area. Continue reading →

Join official Manchester Bridgewater and Rochdale canals tour guide Ed Glinert on an eye-opening FREE tour of the city’s industrial waterways: the Rochdale Canal, the Bridgewater Canal and any others we can find. Glinert, Manchester’s leading historian, author of the forthcoming first ever epic history of the city, “Manchester: The Biography”… Continue reading →