Archive for August 2020

Many guests to the city are crazy about the music history. If they want mad range of music stories then the Free Trade Hall (now the Edwardian Hotel) and its neighbour, the Theatre Royal are good value. The Free Trade Hall was the only building of its time in the UK named after a principle.…

There’s a small creature in Manchester Museum that is one of the best examples of Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection. This is the peppered moth. To quote: ‘In the early 19th century, the peppered moth was known to most naturalists, including Charles Darwin, as a predominantly white-winged moth liberally speckled with black. ‘Then…

The late Dr Michael Powell, the much missed former head librarian at Chetham’s Library, used to love to surprise my guests when I took them on tours around the building. He didn’t jump out and shout boo whilst wearing a comedic mask, no, he used the extraordinary resources of the library. One example which always…

I was wandering around Manchester General Cemetery the other week. This is in Harpurhey, a couple of miles north of the city centre. There’s something very evocative about the place.  On the little hill, above the steep drop to the River Irk valley, the tombs clump and gather like a mini-Mancunian Highgate Cemetery.  Something major…