People: George Best to the Pankhursts
Marx & Engels in Manchester
Next tour, free to register: Thursday 28 November 2024. (Engels’ 204th birthday) Meet: Friedrich Engels Statue, outside HOME, 2 Tony Wilson Place, Gaythorn, 11am. Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. *** Follow in the footsteps of Karl Marx, inventor of that phenomenally popular political system – communism – and Friedrich Engels, the German …
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William Shakespeare
Date: No dates yet. Meet: Entrance, John Rylands Library, time tbc. Booking: Not yet. This is an ingenious new tour dedicated to a man who probably never came to Manchester. But why should that matter? The city centre is alive with mementos to the Bard and dedications to his protagonists. We’ve found seven obvious locations …
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Thomas de Quincey
Next tour: No dates yet. Meet: Booking: Born in a hotel on Manchester’s Cross Street in 1785, Thomas De Quincey is perhaps the greatest local-born writer in Manchester history. Well, him and Anthony Burgess. Originally he was plain Thomas Quincey (he added the “De” to make himself sound more glam), raised by a wealthy family who …
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Anthony Burgess’ Manchester
Next walking tour: Tue 15 Oct 2024. Manchester Literature Festival tours. Meet: Outside St Ann’s Church, St Ann’s Square, 1pm. Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. He was a polymath and polyglot who chain smoked for England and wrote more words than Dickens, Wells and Trollope combined. Manchester was his city, even though …
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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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Suffragette City/The Pankhursts
Next Tour: Sunday 13 October 2024, 1pm. Meet: Outside Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley Street. Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. * This tour takes place on the anniversary of the Suffragettes disrupting the Liberal opposition’s rally at the Free Trade Hall in 1905. It is now nearly a hundred and five years (1 …
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Winston Churchill’s Manchester
Next tour: No dates as yet. Meet: —. Was Winston Churchill the greatest Englishman of the 20th century or was he an egomaniac who should be vilified for using poison gas on the Iraqis? Was he the champion of democracy and decency, the main bulwark against the Nazi psychopaths, or simply a reactionary who opposed …
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Sylvia Pankhurst
Next free tour: Sun 5 May 2024, 1pm. Meet: Emmeline Pankhurst Statue, St Peter’s Square Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. The 5th of May is the birthday of one of Britain’s greatest political activists – Sylvia Pankhurst. She was imprisoned for her beliefs more than any other woman in British political history. …
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The Rothschilds and Manchester
No tours planned yet.
Matt Busby – The Man Who United Manchester
Bob Paisley won more trophies, Bill Shankly made more noise, Alf was better spoken. But nobody commanded more respect than Matt. It may have been the calm air of authority he carried around with him or the fact that he got things done. People looked up to him and did according to his bidding. Matt Busby …
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Manchester News
- Oppenheimer – the Manchester atomic connection
The atom bomb is hot news right now, thanks to this summer’s big blockbuster film, Oppenheimer, named after J. Robert Oppenheimer, organiser of the Manhattan Project which dropped the bombs on Japan in 1945.
Ed Glinert of New Manchester Walks, who has hosted countless local tours that include stopping at the atomic bunker on Chinatown’s George Street, and gives talks on the story of the atom bomb on cruise ships, relates the full atomic story to coincide with the release of the film and as the 78th anniversary of the dropping of the bombs in August 1945 to end the Second World War approaches.
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