New Manchester Walks is run by Ed Glinert, official Manchester guide, and author of Penguin Books’ The London Compendium, West End Chronicles, Literary London and The Manchester Compendium, and Sue Grimditch, London Blue Badge guide. Ed has led walks in London since 2003 and Sue obtained the coveted London Blue Badge guide qualification in 2008.
* Elizabeth Gaskell, who wrote Mary Barton, one of the classic “condition of England” novels in 1848 under a male pseudonym. Interesting.
* Hannah Mitchell, who challenged Churchill at St John’s School during the Suffragette era.
* Annie Horniman, who established Britain’s first repertory theatre company.
* Shelagh Delaney, who pioneered modernist theatre with her groundbreaking A Taste of Honey.
* Ellen Wilkinson (“Red Ellen”), who accompanied the Jarrow miners to London.
* Kathleen Ollerenshaw, who overcame deafness to become Lord Mayor, a leading educationalist, mathematician and advisor to Margaret Thatcher (now what sort of job is that for a Mancunian?!).
* Sylvia Pankhurst, Britain’s greatest political campaigner.
These are just some of the heroic Manchester women we will be celebrating.