Free Manchester Literary Tours This Week

ON selected dates from 12-22 October tour guide and Confidential editor Jonathan Schofield will be conducting free tours of the city. These will be laden and laced with literary tales of an entertaining and informative nature to complement the Manchester Literature Festival.

Starting outside the HSBC bank on St Ann’s Square and lasting an hour, the tours will wend their way around the city, featuring Manchester-born and Manchester-adopted authors – plus those who passed through.

There’s Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Val McDermid, Anthony Burgess, Karl Marx, Dodie Smith, Maisie Mosco, JB Priestley, Howard Spring and many others all having their say, displaying Manchester’s multi-cultural melting pot of literature. 

As JB Priestley said in 1937, ‘Perhaps the secret of the Manchester character is that it is nine-tenths hard north country grit, solid Lancashire bone and muscle and brain, plus a remaining tenth, acting as a leaven, of liberal-minded and enterprising foreign influence, a contribution from Europe.’

The tours have been specially commissioned by HSBC Premier – HSBC’s premium banking service – which supports literature across the UK. The business’s sponsorship of Manchester Literature Festival is a highlight of the bank’s global Cultural Exchange programme, which encourages the exchange of ideas across different cultures as a way of strengthening international business relationships.


The HSBC Premier literary tours take places on the following dates: 

·         Wednesday 12 October, 2 - 3pm
·         Friday 14 October, 2 - 3pm
·         Saturday 15 October, 4 - 5pm
·         Sunday 16 October, 4 - 5pm
·         Wednesday 19 October, 4 - 5pm
·         Friday 21 October, 2 - 3pm
·         Saturday 22 October, 2 - 3pm

Book by emailing jgschofield@btinternet.com