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An entertaining and informative trip down one of the world’s most important streets.
Take a walk along Manchester’s Oxford Road and you could easily mistake it for a busy but unremarkable city-centre thoroughfare. But there’s much more to this street than meets the eye.
As Andy Spinoza reveals, the mile-long strip has provided the backdrop to an astonishing number of world-changing events, from the splitting of the atom to the creation of the first modern computer. It was here, in the aftermath of the Second World War, that the future leaders of Africa met to formulate their vision of liberation, just ten minutes’ walk from the house where Friedrich Engels once lived. And it was here that a ragtag band of anarchists sowed the seeds for Factory Records and the Haçienda.
Telling these stories and many more, Spinoza offers a kaleidoscopic account of Manchester history – and with it, a history of the modern world.
Part I: Origins and destination
Introduction: the road less appreciated
1 Class conflict and stolen kisses
2 Knowledge quarter
Part II: Politics and society
3 Little Ireland and big China: Engels and Marx in Manchester
4 From placards to ‘no platform’: the Suffragettes, student protest and Section 28
5 Deep waters: Africa comes to All Saints
6 The counterculture 1970s: on the Eighth Day and Grass Roots Books
Part III: Buildings and architects
7 ‘A haven in difficult times’: life assurance and rooftop combat at the Refuge
8 Streets in the sky: the Manchester Education Precinct
9 Buildings for billionaires: Norman Foster and Thomas Heatherwick
Part IV: Image makers and influencers
10 L. S. Lowry: the south Manchester ‘Salfordian’
11 Manchester’s place in The Sun
12 Reverting to typography: the design class of ’78
Part V: Stage, screen and spectacle
13 Lost Empires: the golden ages of music hall and the silver screen
14 Another England: Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop
15 Phil Moss, Sinatra and ‘the Curio’: from the big band sound to the Beat boom
16 From Jimmy Savile to The Smiths: the BBC’s Oxford Road show
17 Bob Scott’s revival of theatreland
18 Music Force’s superfly guys: the guerilla roots of the music scene
Part VI: Science and technology
19 Metaphors, media and myth-understanding: Manchester and the mighty atom
20 Science personified, science weaponised: Einstein and Weizmann in Manchester
21 The dark horse: experimental science in Manchester from Schuster to graphene
22 Stored memory in the Manchester mindscape: from Baby steps to superintelligence
Index