Manchester
Pity Andy Burnham
There is something infinitely melancholy in hearing what political ambition does to perfectly nice people. I awoke on Monday to…
Caroline Aherne’s comedic genius is much missed
No one today can unmask pomposity and self-obsession as devastatingly as Aherne did in the guise of the faux-naive Mrs Merton
Manchester won’t raise a statue to Andy Burnham
Already heard enough of ‘Is Manchesterism a thing and did Andy Burnham invent it?’ I’m afraid you’ll hear a great…
‘Here’s a novel concept – arrest bad people’: how Sir Stephen Watson saved Greater Manchester Police
Sir Stephen Watson, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police (GMP), is Warrington-born, Rhodesia-raised. His father was an engineer in the…
Don’t surrender to soulless self-checkouts
A friend runs a small factory employing 60 skilled workers. He exports industrial components worldwide, competing with Europe for quality…
The plain-speaking bloke from Warrington who painted only for himself
Born in 1932, Eric Tucker created his art not for exhibition or in pursuit of fame but simply because he felt compelled to do so
Punk pioneer
Manchester, in the words of the artist Linder Sterling, is a ‘tiny little world’. Nearly three million people live in…
The Marcus Rashford mural – an anatomy of a moral panic
Late on Sunday night, less than an hour after England lost on penalties to Italy in the European championship final,…
Portrait of the Week
Home After ten days spent trying to persuade Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, to accede to the city…
Angry Burnham takes on No. 10
Keir Starmer has made life difficult for Boris Johnson this week with his demand for a circuit-breaker lockdown. But the…
How strict will the new Covid restrictions be?
I have a few points to make about the new three tier system to be announced today for restricting our…
The time of our lives
Presumably because a small part of it takes place in Salford, the epigraph to Andrew O’Hagan’s latest novel consists of…
Stitches and bad-ass bitches
If it’s a test of a good documentary series that it takes us deep into an unknown, even unimaginable world,…
The antidote to virus panic is in the hands of entrepreneurs
It’s a ghost town,’ said the officer manning the body scanner at Manchester airport — Manchester, New Hampshire, that is,…
No presidency for old men
What a thrill! Last night, I was dining with a friend in Piccola Italia, a charming restaurant in Manchester, New…
It’s like being trapped in an episode of Poldark: Peterloo reviewed
Mike Leigh’s Peterloo is one of those films where you keep waiting for it to get good, and waiting and…
The Bilbao effect
Twenty years ago I wrote of the otherwise slaveringly praised Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao: I’m in a minority of, apparently,…
Northern rock
A fortnight ago, the debut album by a young British guitar band entered the chart at No. 6. You might…
Northern overexposure
Manchester isn’t downtrodden, whatever Andy Burnham says. Quite the opposite, in fact
Diary
Scientists are experimenting with growing replacement vocal cords in the lab, as well as transplanting them from dogs. That was…
Spittle is the only thing Labour has left
I have started salivating excessively at night. I wake each morning in a pillowed swamp of my own effluvium, a…
Manchester has marvellous wines, and it’s not finished yet
It will seem an ungrateful comment after the lunch which I am about to describe, but Manchester has some way…
Can the new Northern Powerhouse supremo make Leeds and Manchester work together?
A doff of my flat cap to Jim O’Neill, the former Goldman Sachs economist who has been made a peer,…
Northern exposure
George Osborne on his love affair with Greater Manchester, and his party’s need for ‘a bit of the Heseltine’
Devolution vs democracy
Imagine if, in one of her first acts as First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon announced that, in spite of…
