Arts: Commonplace, the modernist, Manchester.

This brilliantly conceived prelude to Britten’s elementally powerful Peter Grimes (1945) is the invention of the production’s ...

This was the question preoccupying Britain in the long, hot summer of 1995, and is the subject of the gripping, visually ...

At the centre sits a circular playing area occupied only by a bar. Pumps draped in towels, stools stacked upside down, waiting to open. Two carpeted runways lead into the circle, creating a tight ...

There’s an episode of the 90s hit comedy Father Ted where the lads on Craggy Island are visited by ...

It smells the same, but looks different. The famous Power Hall at Manchester’s Science & Industry Museum – that warehouse of steam-powered engines, heaving hydraulics and giant trains – has reopened, ...

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 ...

There’s a raw moment at the close of The Ladies Football Club which brings home how drastically life has changed in the last century. Violet, the instigator of a Sheffield munitions factory’s women’s ...

It all began with Charlie Williams. Less well remembered these days than some of his peers, the former footballer was, in the early 1970s, Britain’s best-known black stand-up, having been promoted ...

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 ...

Lost Souls, the debut album by Cheshire trio Doves, was released 25 years ago. That quarter of a century has been a hell of a ride for the band, made up of brothers Andy and Jez Williams and frontman ...

Perhaps the greatest difficulty facing any reviewer of the poetry of John Cooper Clarke is resisting the temptation simply to quote all the best bits. The difficulty is further compounded by there ...