New Manchester Walks

New Manchester Walks Entertaining, enlightening and historical walks & tours around Manchester including the Town Hall, canal cruises, pub walks, football, art, culture...

This Saturday, 8 Feb 2025, Manchester's only official "Smiths" tour, and we play the music!12 noon from under the Chines...
07/02/2025

This Saturday, 8 Feb 2025, Manchester's only official "Smiths" tour, and we play the music!
12 noon from under the Chinese Arch.

06/02/2025

Manchester's only architecture tour, tomorrow Fri 7 Feb, 12 noon from outside the Midland Hotel with judge Ed Glinert

You've seen the harrowing new film, "The Brutalist"...so join Riba judge Ed Glinert on a tour of a different kind of arc...
02/02/2025

You've seen the harrowing new film, "The Brutalist"...so join Riba judge Ed Glinert on a tour of a different kind of architecture, Manchester's Victorian buildings (with a few modern ones thrown in).
Friday 7 Feb, 12 noon, from outside the Midland Hotel.

31/12/2024

Hot tip. Rooney sacked by Plymouth to replace Amorim at United!

An excerpt from "Manchester: The Biography" by Ed Glinert, out next October. Sunday 22 December 2024, the 84th anniversa...
22/12/2024

An excerpt from "Manchester: The Biography" by Ed Glinert, out next October.
Sunday 22 December 2024, the 84th anniversary of the start of the WW2 Blitz on Manchester.
***
"...There was much random bombing in the area during the 1939-40 period known as the Phoney War. Nothing serious happened until Sunday the 22nd December. This marked the start of the Christmas Blitz. Now Manchester experienced the first wave of a campaign of enemy attack that not even the most imaginative of past forecasters, from Francis Bacon to Joseph Wright of Derby, could have imagined, nor even by those from even half a century before.
The first explosion in Manchester came at the corner of Clarence Street and Princess Street (later replaced by Pearl Assurance House). Two minutes later came reports that the Royal Exchange and Victoria Buildings were alight. No one knew how long these attacks would last, how successful they would be, and what the Germans had in store next.
One aim was to destroy Trafford Park, the docks and other bastions of industry. On the first night, 270 aircraft dropped 272 tons of high explosive and 1,032 incendiary bombs. On the second night 171 aircraft dropped another 195 tons of high explosive and 893 incendiaries. Around 680 people were killed, with another 2,364 injured.
A surprisingly nasty device was the oil bomb. They dropped on a parachute. A passer-by might rush towards it expecting to find a N**i paratrooper only to discover too late that there was no incumbent other than a bomb which would explode flinging out flaming oil as anything touched it."

***

25/11/2024

Join me, Ed Glinert, on the trail of Friedrich Engels in Manchester on his 204th birthday.

11am from the statue outside HOME.

I have made an intricate study of Engels' and Marx's sojourns in Manchester (and worked with Francis Wheen on his magnificent 1990s biography of Marx.

It's free to register with Eventbrite or just turn up. Tips at the end if you think I did a good job!

Manchester's only architecture walking tour, and it's delivered by Riba judge Ed Glinert. 11am, this Saturday from the M...
08/11/2024

Manchester's only architecture walking tour, and it's delivered by Riba judge Ed Glinert.
11am, this Saturday from the Midland Hotel.

05/11/2024

Very pleased today to be taking two nice ladies from an American radio station around Manchester sites associated with Marx and Engels.
Next public tour of same on Engels' birthday - 28 November.

05/11/2024

Fireworks going off all over Manchester right now. It never ceases to amaze me how, out of all the days in the calendar, Guy Fawkes happened to choose Bonfire Night to try and blow up the House of Commons.

Reminder, folks, that Elizabeth Gaskell's Manchester has been rescheduled for tomorrow, Wed 6 Nov, 11am. Meet outside St...
05/11/2024

Reminder, folks, that Elizabeth Gaskell's Manchester has been rescheduled for tomorrow, Wed 6 Nov, 11am. Meet outside St Ann's Church

04/11/2024

This from the BBC:
"Ten reasons why either Trump or Harris might win".
Unbelievable nonsense. There is only one reason why either Trump or Harris might win: only they are standing!!

03/11/2024

Hello everyone. This idea touted here that there is a variety of sources about Manchester history online and in books, therefore no one learns anything different on my tours, is a non-starter.

Nearly every website and book on Manchester is wrong about the most basic facts.
This is because lazy writers have copied other lazy writers without doing the most basic research.

I'll give you a tiny example.

Every book on the Town Hall and every Town Hall tour guide, except those working for New Manchester Walks, will tell you that the statue of the Grelley, lord of the Manchester manor, on the outside of the building is of Thomas Grelley, even though he didn't do anything interesting. I was always sceptical given that Robert Grelley was one of the barons who forced King John to sign the Magna Carta.
I told the history professors at MMU that it was indeed Robert. They laughed and asked why I was so certain.
I explained that it bloody well says "Robert" on the front!! A pair of binoculars sorted this. Basic research.
The only way to discover accurate Manchester history told in an engaging way is on a New Manchester Walks tour.
The only reliable guides are me, John Alker and Gareth from Si Manchester.

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Visitor Centre, Central Library, St Peter's Square
Manchester
M25PD

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