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Spinoza has had a front row seat and been witness to many of the innovations brought about by visionaries, icons and sometimes pantomime villains. Over the past forty years, the most culturally significant period in Manchester's history, Spinoza has been witness to and chronicler of the rise and rise of this city. Elegantly interweaving his own biography with that of the city, Spinoza narrates with panache the story of how the place once known as Cottonopolis has reinvented itself.
You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Spinoza, a latter day Mancunian Pepys, has obviously relied upon a considerable amount of personal notes, contacts, memories and archive materials in putting this impressive account together but that’s what makes it such an engaging and essential read. There's so much in this book to savour, that I can honestly see scholars of history and architecture studying it in decades to come.Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here.
Abandoning the notion of pursuing municipal socialism in a Tory-dominated country, Manchester’s two most powerful politicians spent the 80s and 90s controversially opening the city up to private investment on the most favourable of terms. When United won the 1997 Premier League, half of the first team descended on Home after a riotous day at Chester races, where the red tops later reported they had brawled with other racegoers who first took the fight to them.In the spirit of Braudel, who asserts that ‘the Mediterranean speaks with many voices; it is a sum of individual histories’, this book endeavours to allow the people of the early modern Mediterranean to be heard more than one can find in any other study till now, and strives to cast all its major themes in a new light. News from Nowhere will not obtain personal information from other organisations, and will not share, pass on or sell personal information that we hold about individuals to anyone else.
The views from St Peter’s Square through Castlefield to the Lowry Centre were, and still are, a brilliant 20 minutes’ advertisement for the resurgent urban centre.Sources used include the gamut of genres ranging from factual to fictive, from inquisitional records and different sorts of treatises to plays, novels and (auto)biographies, in numerous languages of the Mediterranean. The “24-hour party people” celebrated in Michael Winterbottom’s film homage to Wilson, says Spinoza, created the aura and cachet that helped them sell Manchester around the world and earn the right to host events such as the Commonwealth Games. Spinoza gives due space to the critics of a gentrification process that has transformed the feel of the city centre. The Muslim-Christian divide in the Mediterranean produced an unusual kind of slavery, fostered a surge in conversion to Islam, offered an ideal setting for Catholic martyrdom in its rivalry with Protestantism, and provided a haven of sorts for Spanish Muslims (Moriscos) as well as Jews.
His remarkable account traces Manchester's gradual emergence from its post-industrial malaise, centring on the legendary nightclub the Hacienda and the cultural renaissance it inspired. Some years ago, when a national newspaper editor headed north to view the property boom that is transforming Manchester’s city centre and its skyline, Andrew Spinoza was entrusted with the job of tour guide. Manchester unspun sorts the truth from the spin of the city’s stories to reveal a remarkable journey, describing the hubris,scandal, money and politics which played out during its remarkable reinvention. When the article came out each of the positive points made by the other contributors was juxtaposed with a negative repost from myself. If you are authenticated and think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
He was one of the people who set up City Life, Manchester’s slightly edgier version of Time Out magazine.
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