On a showery Saturday afternoon with the sound of thunder echoing in my ears, I set off to Manchester’s Red Bank to sample ...

For those interested in history and espionage, Antonia Senior’s highly compelling new book, Stalin’s Apostles, is a ...

So near and yet so far. You know that thing where in New York people say you turn a corner and you’re in a completely ...

As it metaphorically draws up its secret bridge and takes its leave from its Castlefield home of nearly a decade, Saul Hay ...

Ai Weiwei, whose monumental works currently loom large over the hangar-like warehouse space at Manchester’s Factory ...

Anyone who has been through Manchester’s Trafford Park will be familiar with Brian Fell’s landmark sculpture Skyhooks which, ...

It’s been 20 years since BBC Three debuted Ideal, the left-field sitcom written by Graham Duff. Made at the Beeb’s (now gone) studios on Manchester’s Oxford Road, for seven series it starred Johnny ...

When Bonnie Raitt was a young girl, she was enthralled by the power and charisma of such blues and folk greats as John Lee Hooker and Sippie Wallace, modelling her own music and guitar-playing on them ...

For the British Textile Biennial 2025, artists and makers filled spaces – which previously, directly or indirectly, powered Lancashire’s cotton industry – with stories of innovation in textile ...

As we approach the end of 2025, we’re looking back at the things that have brought us immense comfort during the year. For the team at Northern Soul, books were once again a source of great joy, and ...

I should probably admit that my knowledge of wrestling is not contemporary. It lives somewhere back in the strange, televised world of the 1970s with characters like Catweazle and Kendo Nagasaki, ...

As I explain the plot of The Pied Piper of Hamelin to my 13-year-old niece, I watch her expression turn to horror. “Well, there’s this piper who is asked to rid a town of a rat infestation. He plays ...