Culture of Manchester

20th century broadcaster and social commentator Brian Redhead once said "Manchester ... is the capital, in every sense, of the North of England, where the modern world was born.

[28] Salford Quays, a short distance from the city centre in the adjoining borough of Trafford, is home to Imperial War Museum North.

[35] In Elizabethan times the Court Leet of the manor of Manchester appointed town waits to undertake certain duties, one of which was of "playing morning and evening together, according as others have been heretofore accustomed to do".

[39] In the 1950s, the city was home to the so-called 'Manchester School' of classical composers, which comprised Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, David Ellis and Alexander Goehr.

[44] Maria Malibran, the great French singer, appeared at the festival of 1836 having been injured in a fall from her horse in July which led to her death on 23 September.

[45] In 1848 Frédéric Chopin, already suffering from serious illness, came to play in a Manchester concert and the Guardian writer noted his extraordinary subtleties of tone and feeling.

In ye groves let's sport and play, For this is Flora's holiday, Sacred to ease and happy love, To dancing, to music and to poetry; Your flocks may now securely rove Whilst you express your jollity.

Musical ensembles active in the early 20th century included the Gentlemen's Glee Club, the Manchester Vocal Society and the Brodsky Quartette.

[47] In 1929 the 250-strong Manchester Children's Choir recorded Henry Purcell's "Nymphs and Shepherds" and the Evening Benediction from Hansel and Gretel with the Hallé Orchestra at the Free Trade Hall.

Since 1996, however, Manchester has had a modern 2,500 seat concert venue called the Bridgewater Hall in Lower Mosley Street, which is also home to the Hallé Orchestra.

[49] The hall is one of the country's most technically advanced[citation needed] classical music and lecture venues, with an acoustically designed interior and suspended foundations for an optimum sound.

Among the others born in the Manchester area are Richard Ashcroft, front man of alternative rock group the Verve, and Jay Kay, the singer and mastermind of the acid jazz band Jamiroquai.

He wrote many historical novels some of which relate to the history of Lancashire, including The Manchester Rebels which tells the story of six soldiers from the grammar school who fought in the Jacobite cause in 1745.

Charles Dickens is reputed to have set his novel Hard Times in the city, and while it is partly modelled on Preston, it shows the influence of his friend Elizabeth Gaskell.

Bronte started writing at the Salutation Lodge (now a public house) on the fringe of the city centre on Higher Chatham Street in Hulme - a few blocks away from Oxford Road.

[74] Brontë was in Manchester to take her father, Patrick, for a cataracts operation and a blue plaque adorns the building where Bronte began writing the novel.

It is considered to be an important social and historical novel, charting the rise of Jabez Clegg, the eponymous "Manchester Man", from the time of the Napoleonic Wars to the first Reform Act.

His personal fortunes, from the near tragic snatch of his crib from the River Irk, create a tale of romance and melodrama, his life from apprentice to master and from poverty to wealth, mirroring the growth and prosperity of the city.

The book is still read throughout the world (following republication in 1991 and again in 1998), and its heroes, Jabez Clegg and Joshua Brooks, are commemorated locally in the names of Manchester public houses.

[79] Howard Spring, a Welsh novelist born in 1889, spent a period of his life as a journalist in Manchester and set his first novel, Shabby Tiger (1934) there (one of the main characters is the glamorous and ambitious Rachel Rosing).

Howard Jacobson, born in Prestwich in 1942, an area with a strong Jewish community, has written about post-war Manchester in The Mighty Walzer (1999) and Kalooki Nights (2006).

The Scottish crime writer Val McDermid (born 1955) lived in the city for many years and set her Lindsay Gordon and Kate Brannigan series in Manchester.

Carol Ann Duffy, the UK's Poet Laureate as of July 2013, is a resident of Manchester and read her work "The Crown" at Queen Elizabeth II's 60th coronation anniversary ceremony.

Great actors and actresses who appeared on the Manchester stage included the Kembles and the Keans, Macready, Henry Irving and Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson.

In the latter half of the 19th century the Prince's Theatre in Oxford Street was the scene of a series of public-spirited dramatic enterprises, including those remarkable Shakespearean revivals organised successively by John Knowles and Charles Calvert.

Productions were of a high standard and the plays included works by Ibsen, Synge, W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Verhaeren, Gerhart Hauptmann, Sudermann and Euripides, as well as some of the English classical dramatists.

Of very early pubs the Seven Stars in Withy Grove had disappeared while the Wellington Inn and Sinclair's Oyster House had been removed from their original sites.

Broadcaster Jimmy Savile is credited as becoming the first modern DJ by using twin turntables for continuous play after he obtained two domestic record decks welded together.

Rob Gretton, manager of New Order (the band formed from the remaining members of Joy Division after singer Ian Curtis's suicide) and Factory Records boss Tony Wilson opened Fac 51 the Haçienda on Whitworth Street West in 1982.

Manchester's gay culture was brought to mainstream attention on television series Queer as Folk and Coronation Street, which are set in the Village.