I am a Stranger Here Myself  The Music of Kurt Weill

Posted on: July 7th, 2026 by Editor-Jo

Kurt Weill was a German-born American composer who created a revolutionary kind of opera of sharp social satire in collaboration with the writer Bertolt Brecht. He was born in 1900, into a Jewish family in Saxony, in what was then the German Empire. His father was cantor of the local synagogue. Weill died, almost exactly half a century later, in New York city, the hub of glitz. What happened in between, which established him as one of the most interesting and versatile composers of the twentieth century, is a tale almost worthy of one of his operas or musicals. Weill’s political and musical ideas and his Jewish birth made him persona non grata to the Nazis, and he left Berlin for Paris and then for London. His music was banned in Germany until after World War II. He was a major collaborator with Berthold Brecht, Maxwell Anderson and Ira Gershwin and was married (twice!) to Lotte Lenya, who became famous after his death as Rosa Klebb in ‘From Russia With Love. 

Derek Blyth will tell the story, with songs from Die Dreigroschenoper, Lady in the Dark and many others, performed by Jill Taylor, visuals on screen and anecdotes aplenty. 

Derek and Jill teamed up in 2016 to perform for the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society and from there to the Didsbury Arts Festival where they have become a regular and very popular feature of the programme. 

Practical Information

Booking is essential.

Accessibility Information

The venue is wheelchair accessible with an accessible toilet on the ground floor. Please contact us regarding any specific accessibility requirements you may have by emailing events@manlitphil.ac.uk

Manchester City Centre Peace Trail No 2 – A Guided Walk

Posted on: June 24th, 2026 by Editor-Jo

Join a guided walk exploring Manchester’s rich peace and social history.

A guided walk around parts of the Manchester Peace Trail, starting at the Turing Statue in Sackville Park at 10.45am for 11.00am. The accessible route will take us via HOME and the Peterloo Memorial, to finish in St Peter’s Square around 1.00pm.

On the way we will consider

  • Alan Turing and gay rights
  • Engels, Peterloo and the popular reform movement
  • Lydia Becker, Margaret Ashton, the Suffragists and Suffragettes
  • John Dalton, Ernest Rutherford and the nuclear time-line, free-thinking, education and science
  • and the various peace and radical memorials in Central Library.

Join volunteer walk leader and peace activist Steve Roman for an illuminating and inspiring guided walk along parts of the Manchester Peace Trail. This walk complements the Literary & Philosophical Society walk he led in April.

Journeying through the Peace Trail will bring alive Manchester’s history of research which was to lead to the development of the atom bomb. Also covered will be its radical history, its growth as the world’s first industrial city and its importance as a centre for peace, tolerance and the promotion of social justice in the city and around the globe. Buildings and locations will gain new meanings as we learn about their peace history and the relevance for social justice movements. www.discoverpeace.eu

The guide is donating his fee to charity

Location

Meet at 10:45am at the Turing Statue in Sackville Park.

Manchester: One City, Many Voices

Posted on: June 22nd, 2026 by Alan Wareham

The Manchester Lit & Phil and MACFEST held a vibrant evening celebrating the power of words to bridge cultures, spark understanding, and illuminate the rich tapestry of our city.

Manchester: One City, Many Voices brought together a distinguished panel of poets whose award-winning works span continents, traditions, and lived experiences.

Through live readings and personal reflections our guest writers explored what diversity and inclusion truly means in a city shaped by migration, creativity, and community. Their stories – rooted in memory, identity, struggle, joy, and hope – offered a compelling portrait of Manchester as a place where many cultures not only coexist, but flourish.

This unique event invited audiences to reflect on the ways literature can build empathy and connection, celebrating Manchester as an exemplar of multiculturalism at its best. The audience were inspired, challenged, and uplifted by voices that reflect the city’s past, present, and ever-evolving future.

This was a free public event, designed to welcome audiences from all backgrounds and to highlight the unifying power of literature and the spoken word. There was time for discussion and questions to the poets.

 

One City, Many Voices brought together four writers – Nasima Bee, Nóra Blascsok, Pamela Galloway and Peter Kalu.

 

Nasima Bee is a performance poet, producer and creative practitioner who uses art as a means of activism and her work is an exploration of the everyday through a personal lens that connects to its audience through inquisition and conversation. Nasima focusses on the human, centring stories that are unheard, misrepresented or ignored.

Nóra Blascsók is a Hungarian poet based in Manchester and one of the Manchester Multilingual City Poets in 2025. Manchester Literature Festival and Manchester UNESCO City of Literature co-commissioned Nóra to create a new work responding to the themes of ’sanctuary’ and ’welcome.’ Her powerful and playful response is ‘Guernica Children’.

Pamela Galloway divides her time between Canada and Manchester having grown up in Longsight. Each of her two homes provides rich inspiration for her poetry, and she writes about the people she encounters in daily life and the landscapes around her.

Peter Kalu is a poet, fiction writer and playwright who grew up in Manchester. In 2024 he received the Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship award and his acclaimed lyrical essay-memoir collection Act Normal was published in 2025 by Hope Road. Much of his writing reflects the UK second-generation migrant experience.

Buildings in Manchester City Centre – A Guided Walk

Posted on: June 16th, 2026 by Editor-Jo

The walk will encompass the history and character of the 19th century city as seen in its buildings. Professor Asa Briggs famously described Manchester as ‘the Shock City of the Industrial Revolution’. It was the world’s first industrial city. A long-established town, Manchester was the first to embrace both factory-based mass production on a massive scale and the global commerce involved in the importation of raw materials, the production and sale of finished textiles and the multiplicity of associated engineering and chemical industries that went hand in hand. Unfettered by guilds and corporations, Manchester was always ahead of the curve. ‘What Manchester thinks today London thinks tomorrow’ was a famous aphorism highlighting Manchester’s innovation, culture and radicalism that heavily influenced the rest of the country. Wealth derived from manufacturing and commerce spawned civic pride which found expression in mercantile palaces – Manchester’s famous palazzo warehouses – and in equal expressions of civic confidence. These are largely contained in the square mile which is the city’s historic core. The route will cover numerous examples of Manchester’s special building type, the cotton packing warehouse. Their development in terms of layout, construction technology and architectural expression spanning the period 1820 – 1920 will be explained. The walk will also cover commercial and civic buildings within the historic core including works by Charles Barry, Alfred Waterhouse, Basil Champneys, Thomas Worthington, Edward Walters, J E Gregan, Charles Heathcote, Harry S Fairhurst and others. We will see the Town Hall emerging from its scaffolding wrap as the half billion pound restoration nears completion. We will also see the fully restored Albert Memorial which was originally completed ten years ahead of its London namesake.

The walk will cover about one and a half miles. Please be aware that parts of the canal towpath are uneven.

Location

Meet at 10:30am at the Statue of Queen Victoria in Piccadilly Gardens.

The Gaskells and the Cultural Life of Victorian Manchester

Posted on: May 7th, 2026 by Alan Wareham

Manchester was the first industrial city in the world, a triumph of science, engineering and private enterprise, although technically it did not gain city status until 1853 when it received a royal charter. Many saw this metropolis as a cultural desert, but there were many artists, writers and musicians who lived and thrived in Manchester, proving that there was more to this city than its mills and foundries. Looking at art, music and literature, I trace how the arts thrived in the city, from the Manchester Music to the founding of the famous Halle Orchestra; from the Art Treasures Exhibition in Old Trafford to the setting up of a Society of Women Painters, the city was alive with exciting cultural events. Ruskin and Dickens both lectured in Manchester, the writers Geraldine Dewsbury (Zoe and the Half Sisters) and Mrs. Isabella Banks (The Manchester Man) lived in the city, while Francis Hodgson Burnet (Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Lass O’Lowries) though born in Cheetham Hill, later moving across the border in Salford. I leave Elizabeth Gaskell until the end, as she lived in the city and worked hard to improve the lives of its workers. Through her connections with writers and industrialists and her great love of art and music, it is possible to trace how the arts, science and engineering became intrinsically linked. And, of course, Gaskell’s Mary Barton divided the nation because she took up the plight of the factory workers against her own peers; at least that is what many believed.

This talk explores how Elizabeth Gaskell and her circle were at the centre of Manchester’s cultural life during the mid-19th century and how two of her daughters continued her legacy.

Practical Information

The talk includes a Q&A session.

Booking is essential. Lit&Phil members: we recommend logging into the website to make booking your free member ticket quicker and easier.

Accessibility Information

The venue is wheelchair accessible with an accessible toilet on the ground floor. Please contact us regarding any specific accessibility requirements you may have by emailing events@manlitphil.ac.uk

Beneath the Great Wave – 2nd Tour

Posted on: April 11th, 2026 by Alan Wareham

Join curator Imogen Holmes-Roe for a tour of Beneath the Great Wave: Hokusai, Hiroshige, and ukiyo-e print, the Whitworth’s first exhibition dedicated to Japanese prints in over 100 years. This exhibition presents iconic artworks by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) to explore the evolution of traditional ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings.

Translated as ‘Pictures of a Floating World’, ukiyo-e prints were popularised during the Edo period (1615–1868) and reveal Tokyo’s emergence as a city at the cusp of the modern age. Exploring the work of Japan’s most celebrated artists, the exhibition shows how Hokusai and Hiroshige’s landscape prints transformed the genre.

Meet in the foyer of the Whitworth Gallery.

Beneath the Great Wave

Posted on: April 11th, 2026 by Alan Wareham

Join curator Imogen Holmes-Roe for a tour of Beneath the Great Wave: Hokusai, Hiroshige, and ukiyo-e print, the Whitworth’s first exhibition dedicated to Japanese prints in over 100 years. This exhibition presents iconic artworks by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) to explore the evolution of traditional ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings.

Translated as ‘Pictures of a Floating World’, ukiyo-e prints were popularised during the Edo period (1615–1868) and reveal Tokyo’s emergence as a city at the cusp of the modern age. Exploring the work of Japan’s most celebrated artists, the exhibition shows how Hokusai and Hiroshige’s landscape prints transformed the genre.

Meet in the foyer of the Whitworth Gallery.

Manchester Lit&Phil Literary Book Club

Posted on: March 1st, 2026 by Alan Wareham

Adapted into a sumptuous, star-studded movie that won seven Academy awards, the memoir Out of Africa recalls Danish socialite Karen Blixen’s time as a coffee farmer in Kenya in the early part of the last century.

The Times described it as ‘Compelling. . . a story of passion. . . and a movingly poetic tribute to a lost land’. The New York Times begged to differ, saying ‘the country’s history seems to begin with the arrival of Europeans like Karen Blixen . . . her sojourn in Africa, is depicted through a haze of romantic sentimentality that obscures its most obvious and obnoxious features.’

Join us for what is likely to be a lively discussion about Out of Africa, and help us to kick off the first of our non-fiction books on our reading list.

The Lit & Phil Literary Book Club is free and exclusively for members, operating on a first come first serve basis, up to a maximum of 15 people.

Save the date and start reading.

April 28 book club: Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell. (Classic fiction)

May 26 book club: A Handful of Dust, by Evelyn Waugh. (Contemporary fiction)

June 30 book club: The Places in Between, Rory Stewart (Non-fiction)

Airwaves to Algorithms

Posted on: February 9th, 2026 by Alan Wareham

Manchester Lit&Phil in association with Salford University present Airwaves to Algorithms: How broadcasting and media is changing in Manchester.

Greater Manchester has long been home to some of the most famous broadcasters and programmes in the country, from the birth of commercial television at Granada Studios, to the BBC’s first regional television and radio site being based in Rusholme. Now, Salford hosts MediaCity, one of the largest hubs for the creative and broadcast industries in Europe.

So many of the most iconic and influential television and radio programmes in the world have Manchester running through their DNA – and the media and creative industries have long run through Manchester’s DNA too.

Now, though, things are changing. Viewing and listening habits have shifted, the media ecosystem has fragmented, traditional platforms have given way to, or been forced to join, an array of new and thriving digital platforms.

In a world where everyone is a content creator, and everyone is a publisher, where does this leave Manchester and its creative industries? What role does the region play in this new world order? And is traditional broadcast media as we knew it… dead?

Join us for a drinks reception and an interactive panel discussion, chaired by Times Radio’s Darryl Morris.

Our Panel

Darryl Morris – Times Radio – Chair
Seamus Simpson – Prof Media Policy, Salford University
Stuart Morgan – Founder of Audio Always
Matty White – TV & Radio Producer/Presenter

On The Night…

18.00 – 18.30 Venue opens for ticket holders to arrive for a welcome drink in the foyer (Included in ticket)
18.30 – 19.15 Panel discussion/speakers
19.15 – 19.45 Q&A
20.00 Event Closes

Venue

University of Salford, Plot B4, Orange Tower, Media City, Salford M50 2HE.

Plan Your Visit

Full details for Parking, Active travel (walking/cycling), access via Tram, Car and Bus, plus information regarding EV Car Charging can be found at https://www.mediacityuk.co.uk/visit-us/

Accessibility

The venue is fully accessible.

Manchester Lit&Phil Literary Book Club

Posted on: February 1st, 2026 by Alan Wareham

When A Clockwork Orange was first published in 1962 it divided the critics. Time magazine called it ‘a nasty little shocker’ while the New York Times called it ‘a brilliant novel’. One thing everyone could agree on was its inventiveness.

It was thanks to Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation that Burgess’ dystopian satire interrogating free will became a cult classic. The film, however, was mired in controversy and removed from cinemas at Kubrick’s own request. The book has since been recognised as a literary masterpiece.

Join us to discuss A Clockwork Orange, Manchester-born Anthony Burgess’ best-known novel, as part of our contemporary fiction reading list.

The Manchester Lit&Phil Book Club is free and exclusively for members, operating on a first come first serve basis, up to a maximum of 15 people.

Save the date and start reading

March 31 book club: Out of Africa, Isak Dineson/Karen Blixen. (Non-fiction)

April 28 book club: Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell. (Classic fiction)

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