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...

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.

02/11/2024

Kim Law won't let me respond to her so I'll post this anyway. She says she met me on a canal walk years ago. Okay.

Kim, I can't think what I could have possibly done for you to be so full of hate. I have taken thousands of people on those canal walks and they have all thoroughly enjoyed it, laughed at the jokes, taken in the knowledge, and tipped generously. maybe one or two people on a tour of 40 people aren't satisfied. I am sorry if I offended you in some way but I can't see how. I don't go around offending people.

02/11/2024

The other day people on this website, including those I trusted to do the right thing, like Brian Robertson, were condemning me for mentioning Israel - "what has Israel got to do with the walks?"

Today your answer.

Vandals claiming to be supporting so-called "Palestine" have broken into Manchester University's chemistry lab, smashing cabinets and stealing busts of the great scientist, Chaim Weizmann, a Manchester-based scientist who single-handedly solved the UK's explosives problem during the Great War.

This weekend marks the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration which gave us Jews a homeland. Lord Balfour was a Manchester MP. The Balfour Declaration and Britain's involvement was of great benefit to the local Arabs in Palestine/The Levant/The Holy Land because it ended Ottoman rule and brought progressive people to the area to build a democratic Western-styled system to a lawless area with everyone having equal rights and religious tolerance - which is what these Palestinian thugs hate. They want anarchy, genocide of Jews, women covered up, homosexuals killed.
Is that what Manchester people want?
Support Israel for a safer world!

In the midst of much criticism about what am I allowed to write on this page, we have two eye-opening, expert, entertain...
01/11/2024

In the midst of much criticism about what am I allowed to write on this page, we have two eye-opening, expert, entertaining, enlightening tours tomorrow, Saturday 2 Nov.
Needless to say, these are the only such tours where you will get stories you will love to hear that nobody else will tell you.
* 11am, Secrets of Ancoats (Band on the Wall).
* 2pm, Angel Meadow: Victorian Hell-Hole (Victoria Station wallmap).

The New Statesman, like the Guardian, is a publication obsessed with ridiculing Jews. This recent edition had a selectio...
31/10/2024

The New Statesman, like the Guardian, is a publication obsessed with ridiculing Jews. This recent edition had a selection of letters of the predictable variety ... " I love Jews...I am a Jew...but what they're doing to the Palestinians is...[fill in yourself].
A Vera Lustig of Walton-on-Thames, supposedly Jewish, claimed that 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes when Israel was established in 1948.
Absolutely crap. Not one Arab (not Palestinian) was expelled. The government changed from the British mandate to Israel, at which point Arab warlords told Arabs to leave and join them in a huge army to drive the Jews out. They lost. They will continue losing.

30/10/2024

Just reading Bob Scott's history of the Royal Exchange. Scott, if you remember, was the guy behind two amateurish bids to get Manchester as hosts for the Olympics. Still a great idea but there isn't the initiative here now sadly.
Anyway, on Page 1, Scott, writing in 1976, tells us that there are only three buildings in the city centre left from an arbitrary year he cites, 1724, the year the Exchange was founded. His three are:
* The "shell" of the Cathedral.
* St Ann's Church.
* The Old Wellington.
No mention of Chetham's!!
No wonder his Olympics bids failed!

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