BBC news wanted an expert on the history of Cheetham Hill, Red Bank and Angel Meadow, with particular reference to the legendary Sister Elizabeth Prout, who worked amongst the Victorian poor relieving those most afflicted, so they turned to New Manchester Walks’s Ed Glinert. You can too on any of around a hundred local tours. 
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Manchester became the world’s first industrial centre at the end of the 18th century, and within a hundred years was the second city of the empire, a vast commercial and cultural hub, setting for the greatest Town Hall in the country, home of the brilliant newspaper the Manchester Guardian, and an exciting reputation as the home of protest, progression and culture. Hear the full story with Manchester’s expert historian, Ed Glinert.

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New Manchester Walks is the only official, trained, expert group of guides operating commercially in the Manchester area.

Entertaining, exciting guiding: why be bored on a tour?

Our mission is to open up Manchester history to as many people as possible though our tours, walks, talks, articles and books. It’s a bit of a battle, given that Manchester’s history has been severely mistreated for decades…
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Take to the streets, get some exercise, indulge in some brain nourishment. Because we know many of you are apprehensive at going on a packed tour we are welcoming private tours for small groups.

So, if you have a large group, maybe U3A or Probus, or just a group of friends, we can take you out in smaller numbers, one small group at a time. That way everyone gets to go on the tour and everyone feels safe.

Please e-mail info@newmanchesterwalks.com or phone 07769 29 8068 for more details.
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Spain’s out, America’s out and Okunoshima Island off the coast of Japan is overrun with rabbits but has no inhabitants. So forget going abroad and holiday in Manchester. The city is overrun with history and you can take part in it at cheap and nourishing prices:

£11 for one person
£16.50 for two.
Please book with eventbrite. If you can’t, let us know.
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It’s not just Bristol (and London as Sadiq Khan has just discovered) that have the wrong statues. Manchester is full of them. First of all, the most glaring anomaly, is that in a city that prides itself as one of the most left-wing in the country there are more statues of Tories than socialists: 3-2 at the last count.

Funnily enough the people, yes, we the people, are to blame for this in one respect. When the public was asked a few years ago to choose a new statue that had to be of a woman, under-represented in the city’s statuary, there was huge support for Emmeline Pankhurst at the expense of her more deserving daughter, Sylvia. It was hardly surprising…
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Today’s Manchester painting dissected, discussed and dismembered is “Work” by Ford Madox Brown (1852-65). Ed Glinert reveals all behind Manchester Art Gallery’s most complex and epic painting.
No painting in Manchester Art Gallery attracts more viewers than “Work”. Hordes of people make for it as if by magic, and when they get there they are astonished at the breathtaking panoply of figures, ideas and stories.
On first inspection
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Today’s Manchester picture to enjoy while the Gallery is closed and we can’t take you on art tours: “The Light of the World” by William Holman Hunt (1851-53).

Manchester Art Gallery owns one of three versions of William Holman Hunt’s 1856 Pre-Raphaelite work “The Light of the World”. The others are in Keble College, Oxford, and the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral. Yes, it may be unusual to have more than one version of a painting, but what is even more unusual about the Manchester one is that it may well not be by Hunt, but by his pupil Fred Stephens.
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Just over a hundred years ago, on 1 December 1919, something unprecedented happened in British politics: a woman entered Parliament for the first time. American socialite Nancy Astor had just won a by-election in Plymouth Sutton for the Tories, replacing her husband, Waldorf Astor, who had just been ennobled ironically.
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This from St Paul’s School of London after a Literary Manchester tour

Dear Ed,

I wanted to say a very warm thank you for the tour you gave our students on Thursday 17 October. It was a brilliant introduction to the city and to Manchester’s literary and cultural history. Great for the kids to hear about some of the less heralded figures like Ainsworth and Spring as well as the bigger names. The kids were really buzzing afterwards and you gave them some great hints for further reading.
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