Category Archives: News

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.
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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 →

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 →