
The Arts
William Shakespeare’s Manchester
Next tour: Fri 26 October 2018. Meet: Entrance, John Rylands Library, 2.30pm. Booking: Soon with eventbrite. 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 (just …
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Poetry
Next tour: Fri 26 October 2018. Meet: Queen Victoria statue, Piccadilly Gardens, 11.30am. Words, phrases, ideas, claims, injunctions, entreaties, accusations, threats, memories…“Tho’ much is taken, much abides…which in old days Mov’d earth and heaven”. We honour the greatest writers – Tennyson (that’s him, above), Shelley, Tennyson, Byron, Rossetti, John Cooper Clarke – and explain their links with …
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Elizabeth Gaskell’s Manchester
Next walking tour during the 2023 Manchester Literature Festival: Thursday 26 October 2023. Meet: St Ann’s Church, St Ann’s Square, 11am. Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. Format * A simple walk around Gaskellian sights and sites in the city centre. * A trip up to the Portico Library where the Rev Wm …
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The Manchester Literary Trail
Next tour: No public dates at the moment. Meet: Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley Street, time tbc. Booking: Perfect for a private booking! The three great epic novels set in and around Manchester are Magnolia Street (Louis Golding, 1932), Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood (1933) and Fame is the Spur by Howard Spring (1940). Each is vast, …
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Anthony Burgess’s Manchester
Next tour is FREE: NO DATES YET Event: Manchester Literature Festival FREE walking tours. Meet: St Ann’s Church, 11am. Booking: Next tour: During the 2018 Literature Festival. Meet: St Ann’s Church, time tbc. Anthony Burgess, Manchester’s greatest ever writer, would have been …
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Theatreland – Manchester On Stage
Please contact the guide, John Alker, on 07759 173786 for further details.
Charles Dickens in Manchester
Next tour: Wed 18 Oct 2023 during the Manchester Literature Festival. Meet: Queen Victoria Statue, Piccadilly Gardens, 11am. Booking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. Private bookings: To book privately, please phone Ed Glinert on 07769 29 8068. What a review on TripAdvisor! I booked myself and some Irish/Canadian visitors on a special Charles Dickens’s …
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Coronation Street
When Julie Goodyear first turned up at Granada to play Bet Lynch in 1966, a friend gave her a lift into Manchester in his van. In the back was a cement mixer. Julie expected the pal to drop her on the main road, but as it was raining he insisted in pulling up outside the TV company’s front entrance on Atherton Street. By an amazing coincidence Pat Phoenix was just getting out of her Rolls Royce at the same time. Pat looked Julie up and down “as if I were a piece of dog dirt on her shoe,” as Julie recalled, and said, “‘Don’t you ever, ever dare to upstage me again, young lady.’”
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City of Culture
Manchester Man of the mid-19th century wanted to show the world that the place was more than just a forest of smokestack industries and belching chimneys by creating a city of culture; a metropolis where the arts and the glories of civilisation could flourish alongside commerce and manufacturing. Success followed. Manchester became known for its …
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