Take a walk on the wildside

The Peeps is a brand new book of photographs, interviews and commentary recording the origins, recent past and current regeneration of the Ancoats area of Manchester.

To celebrate the launch, international artist Dan Dubowitz and guest guides will lead a series of free walks around Ancoats – ‘A walk on the wildside’. These will discover the new award winning spaces and explore how artworks have been part of transforming the area.

A selection of Dubowitz’s internationally acclaimed photography from wastelands taken around the world between 2000 and 2010 will also be exhibited at The Ice Plant, Ancoats from 1–3 July, between 10am and 8pm (closes at 6pm on Sunday).

The walks take place as follows:

* Friday 1 July: 10am, 1pm, 4pm and 7pm
* Saturday 2 July: 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm
* Sunday 3 July: 10am, 1pm, 4pm

Meet at the Queen Victoria statue in Piccadilly Gardens. The walks last about an hour and are 1.5 miles long.

Launch of Richard Wainwright, the Liberals and Liberal Democrats: Unfinished Business

By Dr Matt Cole

On Wednesday 15 June, the Richard Wainwright Liberals and Liberal Democrats was launched at a meeting in the Jubilee Room at the Houses of Parliament where he was joined by forty Lords, MPs, political activists and commentators for a discussion on the topic ‘Where now for radical Liberalism?’ The meeting was addressed by political figures from across parties and generations, including longest-serving Lib Dem MP Sir Alan Beith and Lisa Nandy, the 31-year-old Labour MP for Wigan.



Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Simon Hughes described the book as “compulsory reading for the next generation of Liberal Democrat leaders” and the meeting was chaired by noted QC and author Baroness Helena Kennedy. Other contributors included former Liberal Leader Lord David Steel and Lord Greaves of Pendle, and amongst those present were Newsnight’s Michael Crick, BBC Parliament’s Mark D’Arcy, and representatives from think-tanks including the IPPR, Centre Forum, Unlock Democracy and the Joseph Rowntree Trust.



Dr Cole addressed a second launch meeting on Monday 20 June at the National Liberal Club in Whitehall, where a fifty-strong gathering of the Liberal Democrat History Group heard from Dr Cole, Lord Dholakia, Lady Floella Benjamin and Lady Clare Tyler.

Daniel Finkelstein writing in The Times (23 June 2011) described Richard Wainwright, the Liberals and Liberal Democrats as “engrossing” and “fascinating”, saying “reading Cole’s book, I found Wainwright’s life admirable and moving.”

War Correspondent exhibition opens

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM NORTH
28th May to 2nd January 2012

A new exhibition revealing the people behind the news has recently opened at the Imperial War museum North.

See the bullet that deflected into Kate Adie’s leg in Lebanon, a burqa worn by John Simpson to secretly enter Afghanistan in 2001, the typewriter Michael Nicholson used to write his reports from Vietnam and one of Martin Bell’s trademark white suits, plus many more fascinating objects.


If this has pricked up your ears, why not take a look at Pockets of resistance, the most detailed, sophisticated and theoretically grounded analysis of wartime media coverage written to date.

NEW TITLE



Another title focusing of the reporting of war and conflict, The Politics of War Reporting (Nov 2011), will challenge the assumptions that reporters and their audiences alike have about the way the journalistic trade operates and how it sees the world.

Did you spot us at the Manchester Book market this weekend?

We were selling a hugh selection of favorites from the MUP back catalogue at the Book market in Manchester this weekend.



Thanks to everyone in Manchester who came to check out our stand.

See you next year!

Author Paul Phillips visits Manchester

Rhode Island based author Paul Phillips was in Manchester last week, and treated visitors at The International Anthony Burgess Foundation to a rare insight into the music and literature of Anthony Burgess.

Last year Paul published the highly acclaimed Clockwork Counterpoint, the first major study of the music and literature of Anthony Burgess.

Thank you to Paul for a very entertaining evening.

Moving stories author on ABC Radio

Alistair Thomson (Moving stories, Ten Pound Poms) has appeared on Australian national radio ABC. Follow this link to access the interview.