This was the question preoccupying Britain in the long, hot summer of 1995, and is the subject of the gripping, visually stunning and splendidly funny play, The Battle, currently running at Manchester ...

This brilliantly conceived prelude to Britten’s elementally powerful Peter Grimes (1945) is the invention of the production’s ...

Arts: Commonplace, the modernist, Manchester.

At the centre sits a circular playing area occupied only by a bar. Pumps draped in towels, stools stacked upside down, waiting to open. Two carpeted runways lead into the circle, creating a tight ...

The Ladies Football Club is at Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, until March 28, 2026. For more information, follow this link: ...

The original 1897 version of War of the Worlds is often seen as a critique of Victorian imperialism. H.G. Wells putting pen to paper in literary protest at the destructive power of European ...

Most people already know this story, or think they do. The history of Joy Division and New Order has been told so often that it’s hardened into one of Manchester’s defining narratives, both a starting ...

What’s that you say? You don’t know much about opera and you don’t think it’s for you? Well, let me tell you, it is for you, as English National Opera (ENO) admirably demonstrated with its splendid ...

Just after I arrive to interview Nick Vorstermans, the woodworker who has carved out a corner for beautiful things at Studio Critical: in Chorlton, a couple walk in and I witness an exchange that ...

It was a wet and cold winter lunchtime in Durham and I was hungry. A stranger in town, I had two hours to kill before my train so I consulted my trusty Harden’s Guide. The app has a useful search ...

The story is still told locally of how Halifax’s astonishing Piece Hall, the 18th century Italianate piazza in the heart of the town originally built for trading cloth pieces, was very nearly ...

Growing up, parents are gods, even when they are deeply flawed or non-existent. Regardless of their part in your life, they are essential to your genetic make-up, whether that’s eye colour, your ...