On 4 June 1976, the Sex Pistols played for the first time in Manchester at the Lesser Free Trade Hall. The gig is seen as the catalyst for the Manchester music scene which followed. Paul Welsh was the only person there on the night taking photographs, which have since been sold world-wide through Getty Images. […]
Two award-winning stars of Irish writing join us to discuss their acclaimed novels. Jan Carson’s The Raptures is a playful, inventive whodunnit set in the small town of Ballylack. Hannah’s classmates are dying of a mystery plague to which she’s immune. As each of the dead children visit her, Hannah begins to question her religious upbringing as […]
‘I live with the dread that one day when my young muscles rebel, can take no more stillness and the brutal confinement of my very self, I will stand and strip naked and burst out of my skin.’ Without Warning and Only Sometimes is Kit de Waal’s memoir of a childhood of opposites and extremes. Raised in […]
It's 1746 and Georgian London is not a safe place for a young Black man, especially one who has escaped slavery. So how does Charles Ignatius Sancho meet the King, write and play highly acclaimed music, become the first Black person to vote in Britain and lead the fight to end slavery? In his captivating debut novel, The Secret […]
One family, four decades, four funerals, one unfulfilled promise. Winner of the 2021 Booker Prize, Damon Galgut joins us to discuss his masterpiece The Promise, a gripping, beautifully written family saga based around a farm in South Africa. Through the members of the Swart family, Damon explores personal and political change as the family splinters and […]
The bestselling and much-loved author of Brick Lane, Monica Ali visits MLF to celebrate her brilliant new novel Love Marriage, her first book in a decade. Yasmin’s engaged to fellow Junior Doctor Joe, but when they bring the two families together – one love-matched, long-married Bengali immigrants who thrive on home cooking and the other a single white […]
Award-winning BBC broadcaster Nihal Arthanayake brings a defibrillator to our ailing ability to connect through conversation. In Let’s Talk: How to Have Better Conversations, Nihal considers what’s happened to discourse, both public and private, over recent years. How Brexit, lockdown and social media have led to division, monologues, and a lack of in-person discussions. Through skills honed by […]
From Millworkers to Millennials: paintings, drawings and screen prints by Jean Hobson When Jean Hobson started drawing Manchester’s old buildings in 2007, she did not realise she was charting a pivotal moment in the City’s history. This new body of work explores the story of Manchester’s second renaissance. It looks at how the city’s rich […]
Looking for a fun way to introduce children to important environmental issues? Sarah Roberts, author of the acclaimed Somebody Swallowed Stanley, will be sharing her latest beautifully illustrated book Somebody Woke Wilson. For millions of years, Wilson has slept toasty deep underground, along with billions of other carbon atoms. But when Wilson is suddenly woken, he is […]
At first glance, it seems unlikely that the white English Victorian writer Charles Dickens and the Black American musician Prince Rogers Nelson have anything in common. But as two of Nick Hornby’s ‘artists who have shaped me, inspired me, made me think about my own work’ he set out to see whether there was anything […]
With Moniza Alvi, Romalyn Ante, Rebecca Goss, Ian Humphreys & Carola Luther One of the most dynamic and admired American writers of the 20th Century, Sylvia Plath’s legacy as a fiercely intelligent, confessional feminist poet and novelist continues to inspire generation after generation. After Sylvia: Poems & Essays in Celebration of Sylvia Plath marks the 90th anniversary […]
‘“Is it true?” Gaspar had asked. “Is it true that the dead travel fast?” His father had finally looked up and said, simply: “Some do.”’ Argentinian mistress of dark literature, Mariana Enriquez joins us in Manchester to discuss her superb, brutal novel Our Share of Night (translated by Megan McDowell). Gaspar is six years old when the […]
From dedicated performance spaces to stairwells, screens, nooks and domes, Central Library might directly inspire your next event or intervention. Contact us to arrange a tour.
