In its 20th anniversary year, the co-directors of Manchester Literature Festival, Cathy Bolton and Sarah-Jane Roberts, talk ...

Ruth Berkoff appeared at the Women in Comedy Festival in Manchester. For more information on The Beauty of Being Herd, click ...

In essence a waking biography unmoored by dream, Balkan Erotic Epic is a singular, captivating, discomfiting, uneven and ...

To misquote Jane Austen: ‘Prizes are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.’ The prose stylist against whom all who have come after must measure ...

At any time of day or night, the skyline of Media City is shattered by a geometry of lights, lines, and colours. Now, thrusting along the water, its bold shapes find echoes in the vibrant new artwork ...

Ah, autumn! Blackberries picked, apples harvested, Keats consulted, barely-bronzed legs hidden till spring, and folk across the land are surprised and flattened by the forgotten weight of their high ...

Living in Manchester city centre affords glimpses into the habits of modern Britain. On my daily shop to the local supermarket, I watch the lunch choices of office workers as they queue. Sandwich, ...

This is getting boring. Another great night out at Shakespeare North. Sigh. The food writer Jay Rayner used to say he got his best copy and his biggest readership from his worst reviews. His 2017 ...

Black Sabbath – The Ballet from Birmingham Royal Ballet brings together classical ballet and the music of Black Sabbath, the pioneering heavy metal band formed in Birmingham in 1968. It’s an ambitious ...

‘In folk horror, the soil beneath our feet is seismically unstable’, writes Hollie Starling in her introduction to Bog People: A Working-Class Anthology of Folk Horror. What a prescient collection ...

For those of us – and there are a fair few – with Irish ancestry, cornerstones of Irish culture hold a special appeal. Dancing at Lughnasa, Brian Friel’s poignant play inspired by his own family’s ...

It’s been 20 years since BBC Three debuted Ideal, the left-field sitcom written by Graham Duff. Made at the Beeb’s (now gone) studios on Manchester’s Oxford Road, for seven series it starred Johnny ...