Category: Reviews

Never mind the bog rolls, if ever the country needed a reet good gallows laugh it is now. Fortunately for us, there’s a comedian who can help us in our dark hour....

From the moment the Millfield Girls 1st XI first stepped onto the astroturf together in the September of 1989, I knew we had that special kind of magic....

A photographic exhibition exploring under-represented people with prostate cancer by Ian Smith The Prostate Gap uses photography to explore and challenge the public’s understanding of prostate cancer within under-represented groups in our society. The exhibition spotlights a selection of prostate cancer patients from the black and trans and gay...

For over a decade he has been walking in snowshoes to draw incredible geometric images on the pure white snow of the Alps. And the rest is as they say mathematics......

Your nectar with pure festal glee / Fill gilded bowls and pass them round / Lavishly ...

Before the days of the Internet I used to carry this little pocket rocket around with me....

A Guest Post by Mike Haigh, Printroom Custodian at the Beck Isle Museum, in Pickering, Yorkshire, tells us how. The Columbian Letterpress Double Demi Revealed This hand printing press was invented by George Clymer, an engineer from Philadelphia, USA, in 1813. The design was the first all metal lever...

  This piece can be viewed in the Manchester Central Library archives along with hundreds of other women’s stories brought together by The Pankhurst Centre. For more information about this project see the womenswordsmcr blog. Author’s note: This unedited stream-of-consciousness prose on life so far in Manchester was written under...

  “I’ve never been in here before,” said Jules about Central Library. “It is completely overwhelming.” Despite being a resident of Manchester for eighteen years, it’s not really surprising as reading has never been one of her favourite things to do. An undiagnosed dyslexic at school in the 1980s...

When I am dried up, a desert of words, feeling what I imagine it would be like to be an old woman in a time before any of the waves of feminism whetted her appetite for life, I always find myself reaching for a book called Carol. The copy...

In 1993 an empty Last Splash CD case permanently resided at the top of the other CDs sprawled across typical student detritus that grew next to my bed – an overflowing stolen pub ashtray, penguin biscuit wrappers and unused packets of fruit-flavoured condoms. (Only the mint one ever got...

Book of Emotion by Snezana PupovicI was hurtling along on a train from Manchester to Nottingham waiting on a text to see if an old friend was going to make it to meet me at the World Event Young Artist where she was exhibiting. We’d had a good time in...

How are you feeling David Shrigley? Fine, thanks. I just did some yoga. Tell me about your mother? She is 72 years old and used to be a computer programmer until she retired. She likes reading and is active in her local church. Tell me about your father? He...

On the rare occasions when I’m not playing the card game Shithead and I fancy a stroll out into the vulgar world of fun, the place I like to frequent chat, drink, smoke rollie fags and dance is the converted textile building-cum-club called Kraak. Don’t be fooled by hip...

I’m looking for Amy Pennington said the old man slowly clambering into the back of the tiny Bedford Bambi camper parked half a mile inside the Waddington Road entrance to Brungerley Park. That’s me said the woman in the yellow. A yellow hat, yellow coat and yellow scarf signalled...