• DATE
Tour only. Please book here.
Tour followed by tea. Please book here.

We host an original, highly-entertaining and absurdly amusing tour of Manchester’s most famous hotel (after sumptuous refreshments…optional) one Sunday a month and nearly every Monday lunchtime (from end March).

The best known story about the hotel refers to 4 May 1904, the date when Rolls and Royce are believed to have met in the Midland Hotel and decided to go into business together, as displayed at the entrance. What a great event in Manchester history. Well, Ed Glinert, Penguin author and prolific Manchester tour guide, has now done some serious research into this story and come up with some startling twists.

This is just one of the reasons why our Midland Hotel tours sell out fast. Such has been the demand to hear Ed Glinert & co. tell the real story of the hotel: entertaining, enlightening and expertly researched anecdotes about Winston Churchill, John Barbirolli, Michael Collins, Alex Ferguson, Albert Tatlock, the King of Afghanistan, George Best, Johnny Cash…

For future dates, tickets will go on sale as soon as we get the dates. E-mail us if you can’t wait that long and we will reserve you a place!

• For the tea please go to the tea room at the front left of the hotel.
• For the tour please meet by the hotel entrance on Peter Street.
• Book a private tour for your group! We catered for 60 very happy ladies from Wilmslow U3A recently.

Ed Glinert and co have been campaigning for eight years to be allowed to take people on detailed tours of this magnificent building and now we can what an amazing run of stories we’ve unearthed.

The Midland is Manchester’s most famous hotel, built on the site of the house from where the magistrates sent the troops into the Peterloo Massacre, and the site of the concert hall where Chopin was slow-hand-clapped.
• It’s where Rolls is believed to have met Royce.
• It’s where Churchill scoffed 16 oysters and a bottle of champagne – and that was before dinner.
• It’s where Hitler kept the bombing planes away from so that it could be the Nazis’ North-west home once they had invaded.
• It’s where George Harrison was refused admission because he wasn’t wearing a tie.
• It’s where the great and good – Derek Jacobi, Princess Anne, Martin O’Neill, Nigel Havers, Ed Miliband(!), Dave – stay when they come to Manchester.

Now hear the history, soak in the sleek style and lounge in its luxurious locations. What a great way of spending two hours or so!