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“... was in the early 1890s, when he was an engineering student at Owens College, the forerunner of Manchester University. He had retained the biblical certainties of childhood, and was knocked sideways by a lecture given by Professor Dawkins, the eminent Darwinian: ‘I turned from the lecture room with a passive face and a calm voice. But within there was ...”

“... deserted the Tories for the Liberals in 1904 he was obliged to find another parliamentary seat, in Manchester North West, which had a substantial Jewish electorate. In December 1905 Arthur Balfour resigned after his short, fraught spell as Tory prime minister, and the new Liberal government called an election which they would win by a landslide. Having already ...”

“... history. The mantra of ‘Global Britain’ resurrects an ideal of laissez-faire from the era of Manchester cotton mills and New World slavery. Discussing the range of Brexit options at a Tory Conference fringe event in October, the former Brexit minister David Jones concluded: ‘If necessary, as Churchill once said, very well then, alone.’ This is the ...”

“... on the rack, or burning at the stake’ – and all too common, according to the book’s authors, William Tebb and Edward Perry Vollum. A diabetic coma, a trance or catalepsy might make one’s breathing imperceptible; ‘it may even be impossible to see any cloud on a clear mirror.’ Stethoscopes – often made of wood, and hardly sensitive – could miss a ...”

“... uncovering Roman Britain. This is difficult territory. He explores how, between 1586 (the date of William Camden’s Britannia) and 1906 (when Francis Haverfield’s lecture on ‘The Romanisation of Roman Britain’ was published), the Romans were accommodated in narratives of Britishness: ‘This book explores how ideas derived from the Roman domination of ...”

“... not necessity. A few straddled the professional/exile divide, like Friedrich Engels who came to Manchester in the early 1840s on family business and was obliged to stay after his participation in the Baden rising of 1849. But for the business and professional category in general, political considerations came second. They had little difficulty in ...”

“... he was impressed by Flemish painting. Later he studied at Ghent and in the Antwerp Academy. Unlike William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, or Edward Burne-Jones, Brown profited from a broad and thorough education in the business of painting. Later, his art became a passion and a vocation. But it never ceased to be a job from which a living had somehow to be ...”

“... among King James’s translators. Ward Allen’s researches in Alabama, and Gerald Hammond’s in Manchester, have not turned up any such figure. King James’s Bible was the product of a co-operative effort, and yet not of a committee, as we understand committees; nor did it produce prose or verse of the kind that we have all too much reason to expect of ...”

“... has granted him a research fellowship, but he finds the city uncongenial, to put it mildly: ‘Manchester is one of those disgraces by which the human race advertises the squalor and turpitude of its mind.’ Theme for an imaginary dialogue: C.H. Sisson, poet, civil servant and student of government, meets Michel Butor, French novelist, passing time in ...”

“... Men’s Association, a body which called for ‘rational’ organic reform: so organic that William Lovett, its figurehead, later turned to writing manuals on physiology, diet and anatomy. Although they drafted the original People’s Charter, Lovett’s men were soon overtaken by the Chartist leaders of the Midlands and the North: men such as Humphrey ...”

“... shown how they themselves can look to an unflattering eye.Parr grew up in Surbiton but studied in Manchester. His tutors were interested in the work of 1960s photographers of celebrity – men like Bailey and Duffy. Parr and his friends were interested in documenting the unglamorous. Their aim was not to show how grim ordinary lives in poor places are, or ...”

“... had written a story describing the depression he suffered while studying for his MA in history at Manchester. ‘Attitude’ centres on a disenchanted student who writes poetry, a female version of Lewis whose name is Frieda. Lewis believed that Freda, like him, was a lonely soul in need of freedom, and that she had a similar propensity to depression. On 8 ...”

“... and by a handful of libraries (including Wandsworth and the Hertfordshire County Library). Manchester Polytechnic Library has now brought out a catalogue of its holdings covering one hundred years of children’s reading (1840-1939), arranged under 21 headings – ‘Nursery Rhymes and Alphabets’, ‘Picture Books’, ‘Stories 1900-1939’ and so ...”

“... Oxford, a first in history from Liverpool, MAs from Oxford and Cambridge, and an MA and a PhD from Manchester. Only the Manchester MA was genuine, though he should never have been allowed to study for it in the first place. He founded a theological college in Shropshire and was its inaugural principal; later he started one ...”

“... The Hazlitt of our time’, said the Manchester Guardian, announcing the death of James Agate in 1947. An extravagant compliment, but the famous theatre reviewer did have one or two of Hazlitt’s characteristics. Though his journalism now seems too pompous-frivolous even for the theatre world, his reports of actors’ performances are often vivid and persuasive: he was quite learned in his subject and could communicate his own enthusiasm, making drama seem important – more important, perhaps, than it seems to us today ...”