Author Archives: ed
Tony Wilson’s Manchester
Tony Wilson never wrote a song, sang one or played an instrument. Yet he created the modern Manchester music scene. He made things happen; he cajoled people into doing important things. He harried, encouraged, pushed, promoted. It might be fair to say without him Manchester’s music history might have stopped with Sad Café.
As part of the Manchester Heroes and Heroines weekend in April, Fri 20– Sun 22 we honour one of the most popular figures in recent Manchester history: a vainglorious, proud, arrogant, infuriating but genius impresario.
* 11.30am, HOME Arts Centre. No need to book.
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The Difficulty With Refunds. Read this while you’re in lockdown. It’s interesting.
We hope all our customers and potential customers are well. Understandably we are getting a lot of requests of refunds. Some polite; some not so. I shouldn’t have to say this but at this distressing time it is not acceptable to treat the guide and the concept of a tour as a punchbag. Amazingly New Manchester Walks are actually getting e-mails asking for a refund without that simple piece of politeness and good manners.
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MORE HARD-HITTING POLITICAL WALKS. WE’RE RIGHT UP TO DATE. HERE’S THE LATEST ON MANCHESTER’S MAX MOSLEY
If Manchester city council didn’t exist Manchester would still be run by the mediaeval lords of the manor, and the lord of the manor of Manchester would be Max Mosley. What fun that would be: sex orgies, motor racing, but at least no racist leaflets. Well, not any more. But back in 1961, in a by-election in Moss Side, Mosley published a leaflet from 113 Upper Lloyd Street in the heart of the constituency, for the local Union Movement candidate, Walter Hesketh…
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The Story of Manchester in 101 Objects. No. 3: The Rise of Christianity
In Object No. 2 we learned how Christians were almost certainly present in Roman Manchester, c. 180 ad, long before Rome became Christian, thanks to the accidental finding of a piece of revealing pottery. So it is fitting that Manchester is home to the oldest piece of the New Testament ever discovered, the St John Fragment.
This is a tiny piece of papyrus, only three inches high,
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MARK E. SMITH R.I.P.
In a thousand years time people will look back on Manchester in the 1970s and 80s, and say how amazing it must have been to be alive when Mark E Smith was alive and how lucky those people must have been to see The Fall live. End of an era.
The Fall were more than just another group. They were an institution. They embodied everything about the Manchester music spirit. They were anarchic, awkward, wildly amusing, incorrigible and effortlessly brilliant.
They took on the music mantle left by Frank Zappa, Can and Captain Beefheart, and twisted it with Northern wit. Who else could write a lyric: “Winston Churchill had a speech imp-p-p-p-p-ediment”? Who else could devise a version of “Jerusalem” that made you weep laughter as the singer tore into the Government – all of them. We will be honouring the main man in our forthcoming music tours.
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Elizabeth Gaskell’s Manchester
Next walking tour: Manchester Literature Festival, Wednesday 6 November 2024. Meet: St Ann’s Church, St Ann’s Square. Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. How this walk works * A simple walk around Gaskellian sights and sites in the city centre. * A trip up to the Portico Library where the Rev Wm Gaskell …
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THE MANCHESTER HISTORIES FESTIVAL IS HERE!
As Britain’s most political city (sorry, Liverpool), Manchester is the appropriate setting for a festival of protest. Run by the Manchester Histories Festival, it begins this Thursday, 7 June, with Ed Glinert’s Peterloo Massacre talk at the Portico Library and continues with a range of events including a number of popular political protest walks.
Fri 8 June
Seditious Salford, 2pm, People’s History Museum
Marx & Engels pub walk – “Drinkers of the world unite!”, 6pm, St Ann’s church
Sat 9 June
Ten Manchester Speeches That Shook the World, 11.30am, Central Library
The Pankhursts of Manchester, 2.30pm, St Ann’s Church !!SOLD OUT!!
Sun 10 June
The Pankhursts of Manchester, 11am, St Ann’s Church !!EXTRA SLOT!!
The Story of the Peterloo Massacre, Central Library, 1.30pm.
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THE MANCHESTER BEE
Why is the bee the official Manchester animal? In the aftermath of Manchester’s most awful post-war tragedy the bee is appearing throughout the city as a solidarity symbol and a tattoo choice. The bee is already evident throughout Manchester on municipal structures. In the Town Hall the platform outside the Great Hall is called The Bees and is decorated appropriately. The city’s coat of arms features a globe coated with bees. At Manchester Art Gallery the most famous and admired painting is Work by Ford Madox Brown. So how did it gain prominence?
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MANCHESTER LITERATURE FESTIVAL TOURS
The autumn Manchester Literature Festival is here and we at New Manchester Walks are leading a host of literary themed tours covering every single aspect of the written word – not just in October, but all year round!
A special highlight and a brand new tour takes place on Sat 21 Oct – Ted Hughes Country (Hills, Hymns, Hebden Bridge and Heptonstall). Lots of brooding poems under lowering skies. Ends at Sylvia Plath’s sad grave. Meet Mytholmroyd station, 12.30pm.
The tours have been devised by New Manchester Walks’s Ed Glinert, author, editor, journalist, the only Manchester writer and tour guide whose books have been published by Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins and Bloomsbury.
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George Brown
Is Boris Johnson the most unsuitable foreign secretary Britain has ever had? No. That title belongs to George Brown, the dypso deputy leader of the Labour Party at the end of the ’60s. Private Eye coined the phrase “tired and emotional”, meaning blind drunk, after Brown publicly insulted the wife of the British ambassador to …
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