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X-WR-CALNAME:Manchester Walks
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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Manchester Walks
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DTSTART:20240101T000000
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250807T111500
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250807T130000
DTSTAMP:20260421T115727
CREATED:20250706T144758Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250706T144900Z
UID:26283-1754565300-1754571600@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:John Rylands Library and More...
DESCRIPTION:This tour: Thursday 7 August\, 11.15 a.m.\nMeet: Outside St Ann’s Church\, St Ann Street.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nThe John Rylands Library has been closed for nearly a year. Now it’s back – and with our tours! \n*** \nThe only way to truly understand the magic of what is the No. 1 Manchester Attraction on Trip Advisor is on our regular tour.   \nThis is more than a tour of one of the world’s greatest libraries. This is a trip through the industrial and religious history of Manchester linked with the 19th century’s most successful cotton merchant whose legacy survives in the magnificent library named after him. \nTours start with an introduction to the city’s cotton past (at the Royal Exchange) and John Rylands’ religious background (at St Ann’s Church) before we make our way to Deansgate. We then hear: \n* An outline of John Rylands Library’s Gothic architecture.\n* The story of John and Enriqueta Rylands.\n* How the Rylands company became the most successful Manchester cotton merchants of the 19th century.\n* An outline of the library’s riches.\n* Remarkable pictures of the library’s and the John Rylands firm’s history.\n* A look at the oldest piece of the New Testament ever found.\n* A close inspection of the exquisite Reading Room.\n* An explanation of the key statues\, particularly Francis Bacon\, who paved the way for the Industrial Revolution during which Manchester thrived\, and John Wycliffe and William Tyndale who led a revolution in religion. \n***** \nThe John Rylands Library is often described as “the Taj Mahal of the North-West”\, for it is a palace built out of love; a widow’s love for her late husband\, a family’s love of religious literature; a city’s love of Gothic architecture. The building looks like a mini-cathedral\, a religious icon\, a divine presence on Deansgate\, but it is one of the world’s greatest libraries\, for out of the bequest of John Rylands\, Manchester’s richest 19th century cotton magnate\, his widow Enriqueta created an unrivalled collection: Dickens’s novels in their original wrappers; a first edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; the second largest collection of works by the pioneering printer William Caxton; the personal papers of John Wesley\, John Dalton and Elizabeth Gaskell; later complemented\, most remarkably of all\, by the 2nd Century St John Fragment – the oldest existing remnant of the New Testament. \nThe library was built during the 1890s and deliberately placed on Deansgate next to what was then a violent slum (but is now entirely commercialised) to show Manchester’s underclass that there was an alternative. For them and for all users it was and remains free\, a haven of man’s pursuit of intellectual brilliance in a harsh industrial climate. \nThe architect was Basil Champneys whose ecclesiastical touches were toned down by Enriqueta Rylands\, a non-conformist. Nevertheless it remains powerfully Gothic – the last Gothic revival building erected in Manchester\, which opened on 1 Jan 1900 and was the first Manchester building to be lit by electricity. It was recently restored at great cost with a new grand entrance constructed on the south side. \nHighlights of the tour include the St John Fragment and the reading room\, a grand galleried Gothic extravaganza filled with stained glass and statuary. The St John Fragment is just that – a fragment – found in Egypt at Oxyrhynchus (Behnesa)\, the ruined city where some of the most startling and successful excavations in the history of archaeology were carried out. It was donated to the library in 1920 but not identified until 1935 when the papyrus collections were catalogued. The Reading Room is awe-inspiring and overpowering\, but the statues come alive when their significance is explained\, for here are representations of some of the most formidable figures in British history – Newton\, Dalton\, Bacon – the links between religion and science\, unfashionable at the moment\, crucial to the development of civilisation. This is primarily a religious building\, a building devoted to religion rather than for worshipping God. Pride of place goes to those figures found here who made Britain the centre of Christian tolerance: John Wycliffe\, William Tyndale and John Rainolds. \nTours of the library start with an introduction to the city’s cotton past and John Rylands’ religious background outside St Ann’s Church.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/26283/
LOCATION:Outside St Ann’s Church\, St Ann Street\, Manchester\, United Kingdom
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250810T120000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250810T140000
DTSTAMP:20260421T115727
CREATED:20250706T115848Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250706T120230Z
UID:26270-1754827200-1754834400@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Tony Wilson's Manchester
DESCRIPTION:Tony Wilson’s Manchester: Sunday 10 August 2025.\nAnniversary of the day he died in 2007.\n\nMeet: outside HOME\, 12 noon.\n\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \n*** \nTony Wilson never wrote a song\, sang one or played an instrument. Yet he created the modern Manchester music scene. He made things happen; he cajoled people into doing important things. He harried\, encouraged\, pushed\, promoted. It might be fair to say without him Manchester’s music history might have stopped with Sad Café. \nOn the day Wilson died\, 10 August (2007)\, we honour one of the most popular figures in recent Manchester history: a vainglorious\, proud\, arrogant\, infuriating but genius impresario. \nWe will visit the Hacienda\, which he swore “must be built”; Rafter’s (now Tesco’s – fab!)\, where he met Ian Curtis (imagine a universe without Unknown Pleasures and Closer…no!); the Hidden Gem where he made his last confession to an astonished priest; and the site of Granada Television\, now revamped into the Factory arts centre\, named after his record label\, where he preened and pontificated. \nThe Hacienda went bust. Factory Records went bust. Granada TV has been abolished\, but as Wilson was fond of saying “we made history\, not money.” Factory Records’ designer Peter Saville explained: “Tony created a new understanding of Manchester; the resonance of Factory goes way beyond the music. Young people often dream of going to another place to achieve their goals. Tony provided the catalyst and context for Mancunians to do that without having to go anywhere.”
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/tony-wilsons-manchester/
LOCATION:HOME\, 2 Tony Wilson Place\, Manchester\, Select a State:\, M15 4GU\, United Kingdom
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Tony-Willson-1.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250816T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250816T124500
DTSTAMP:20260421T115727
CREATED:20250706T150556Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250706T150648Z
UID:26289-1755342000-1755348300@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Peterloo Massacre: Official Tour on the Day
DESCRIPTION:Peterloo tours on the day: \nSaturday 16 August (Peterloo Day) 2025\, 11am.\nMeet: outside Central Library\, St Peter’s Square.\nBooking: Please press here to book with Eventbrite. \nThese unique Peterloo tours have been devised by Ed Glinert\, Penguin author and compiler of the forthcoming epic work\, Manchester: The Biography\, who has conducted enormous amounts of recent research into the entire Peterloo story (with many thanks to Mike Herbert’s and Robert Poole’s invaluable expertise). \nManchester tour guide Ed Glinert has worked with both the campaigning journalist extraordinaire Paul Foot (author of Red Shelley) and Mike Leigh\, director of the Peterloo film. \n* Read on: \n  \n \nThe Peterloo Massacre of 16 August 1819 is the most dramatic incident in English political history. Sabre-wielding troops charged 60\,000 Mancunians at a rally called to lower the price of bread and demand the vote. More than a dozen people died and some 650 were injured. \nThe first few decades of the 19th century\, enshrined in public imagination as the elegant age of the Regency\, were a time of severe political repression in England. The Tory government\, led by Lord Liverpool\, feared that the kind of revolutionary activity recently witnessed in France would break out in England – probably in Manchester\, where social conditions were so desperate – and chose decided to stamp out all dissent and free speech. \nThe government was at war with France\, which saw Wellington triumph over Napoleon’s forces at Waterloo in 1815. \nBut as Paul Foot once wrote\, the British government was also waging war against its own people. \nThis guided tour\, visiting the site of St Peter’s Field in Manchester city centre where the Peterloo Massacre took place\, has been devised by Ed Glinert\, political commentator with 40 years’ experience for various leading newspapers\, magazines and publishers\, who worked with legendary left-wing political journalist Paul Foot at Private Eye combating injustice. \nGlinert\, who has researched the story for decades\, brings his unique touch to this chilling story\, going into extraordinary detail\, explaining the build-up to the events\, the violence of the day\, 16 August 1819\, and the dreadful aftermath\, introducing related events\, themes and people: Shelley’s powerful poem\, The Masque of Anarchy; the birth of the Manchester Guardian; the Cato Street Conspiracy; the Six Acts; Tom Paine and his bones – even Anthony Burgess.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/26289/
LOCATION:Central Library\, St Peter's Square\, Manchester
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250816T143000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250816T161500
DTSTAMP:20260421T115727
CREATED:20250727T143456Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250814T095727Z
UID:26351-1755354600-1755360900@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:"Fame Is the Spur". Tour Manchester's Greatest Novel
DESCRIPTION:* This annual tour takes place on Peterloo Day: 16 August.\nNOT 2025 \n* Tour led by Ed Glinert\, a Penguin Classics editor\, and Manchester’s leading historian and tour guide. \n* Meet outside Manchester Central Library\, St Peter’s Square\, 2.30pm. \n* Must be booked on Eventbrite by pressing here. \n*** \nHoward Spring’s Fame Is The Spur is the great Manchester novel. It is also the great Peterloo novel and the great Suffragette novel. An astonishing achievement. \nJohn Hamer Shawcross grows up\, illegitimate\, in poverty in Victorian Ancoats. At the start of the novel the elderly lodger in his house shows the young Hamer a sabre he wrenched from a soldier who had used it to kill his girlfriend at Peterloo. Hamer inherits the sword. \nBookish and inquisitive\, he is destined not to go to work in a mill. He goes abroad to find himself\, in classic bildungsroman fashion\, and comes back bursting with braggadocio and a heightened sense of burning injustice. He becomes a firebrand orator within the burgeoning labour movement\, brandishing the sabre to cut his way through politics. As he climbs the slippery pole so he sells out his principles\, Kinnock style\, or actually in the manner of the contemporaneous Ramsay MacDonald\, the first Labour prime minister\, back in the 1920s. Spring had to wait until MacDonald had died before the novel could be published\, otherwise the ex-PM would have sued his ass. \nFame Is The Spur is just one of a series of entertaining Manchester-based novels Howard Spring he wrote once he had left the Manchester Guardian to become a London journalist. \nEd Glinert uses his metaphorical sabre to cut a path through Howard Spring’s Manchester.
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/fame-is-the-spur-tour-manchesters-greatest-novel/
LOCATION:Central Library\, St Peter's Square\, Manchester
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Fame-is-the-Spur.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250817
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20250828
DTSTAMP:20260421T115727
CREATED:20250718T181749Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250718T181921Z
UID:26328-1755388800-1756339199@www.newmanchesterwalks.com
SUMMARY:Ed Glinert researching\, and no other guide wants to do any tours!
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://www.newmanchesterwalks.com/event/ed-glinert-researching/
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