This tour: Saturday 11 January 2020.
Meet: Victoria Station wallmap, 11.30am.
Booking: Please press here to book with eventbrite.
The Good?
• Richard Cobden, who brought us political freedom and free trade.
• George Bradshaw, who made the trains run on time.
• John Dalton, who invented the atom and the weather!
• Sylvia Pankhurst, who won women the vote.
The Bad?
• Ex-chief constable James Anderton: God forbid anyone who dared to be different.
• Jimmy Savile. For decades he was considered a heroic, iconic figure, running highly-popular discos in the city centre and thrilling millions on TV. Then he died and at last his appalling behaviour could be revealed.
• Oswald Mosley: from the family that owned Manchester for hundreds of years, he saw himself as Britain’s answer to Mussolini and Hitler.
The Ugly?
• William Joyce. So extreme was he, Oswald Mosley kicked him out of the British Union of Fascists. He had a nasty scar, ingrained after a fight at a Tory party meeting (see below). He loved coming to Manchester, but you wouldn’t want to sleep in the same bed that he used at one of our top hotels.
We will run down some of the great and not so great from Manchester’s glorious and inglorious past.