GIFT VOUCHERS
Gift vouchers are the ideal gift for birthdays, Christmas and special occasions. And when you order a voucher you get a whole host of free stories and facts to your email with some great pictures - one every weekday.
You can buy them in any number but there is a special deal - the 8 for 6 offer. So buy six vouchers and you get eight vouchers to use in any way you want, one at a time or all eight in one go for instance. For this deal click here or buy below.
The vouchers can be exchanged for places on any Jonathan Schofield tour. Please follow the instructions when you receive the voucher but essentially they are valid for a year from the date of purchase. If the price of the tour is higher than the value of the voucher than, of course, the difference can be paid.
As usual, I will endeavour to be as flexible as possible and if people have to make last minute changes I will try to accommodate them, otherwise two weeks notice is required if people wish to use their vouchers, just in case any of the tours are sold out.
The range of public tours on any given year is huge. Many tours have already been posted (click here), but there will be a whole host more throughout the year, keep your eyes peeled.
Here are some you can expect many of them exclusive: Chetham's Medieval Buildings; The Tour of Uninteresting Objects; The Principal Hotel; The Amazing Abandoned Mayfield Station; The Incredible Interiors Tour; Engels and Marx in Manchester; Suffragettes, Women and Manchester; The Dawn of the Railway Age; Great Speeches Made in Manchester; The Peterloo Massacre; The Classic Pub tour; Gothic Manchester; Haunted Tours; The Properly Ridiculous April Fool's Day Tour; Truly Madly Brutal (a celebration of post-war architecture); The Northern Quarter and Ancoats; Manchester and Literature; Salford's Incredible Chapel Street.
Tours outside the city centre include those up the Irk Valley (the Impossible Bridge and the Improbable Hill tour) plus tours in fascinating suburbs such as Chorlton, Clayton, Old Trafford, Didsbury, Whitworth Park and Victoria Park, Kersal, Platt Fields, The Quays.
In other words there is something for just about everybody. Each voucher is a handsome document with some lovely pictures that will be sent by email for you to print out.
You can buy them in any number but there is a special deal - the 8 for 6 offer. So buy six vouchers and you get eight vouchers to use in any way you want, one at a time or all eight in one go for instance. For this deal click here or buy below.
The vouchers can be exchanged for places on any Jonathan Schofield tour. Please follow the instructions when you receive the voucher but essentially they are valid for a year from the date of purchase. If the price of the tour is higher than the value of the voucher than, of course, the difference can be paid.
As usual, I will endeavour to be as flexible as possible and if people have to make last minute changes I will try to accommodate them, otherwise two weeks notice is required if people wish to use their vouchers, just in case any of the tours are sold out.
The range of public tours on any given year is huge. Many tours have already been posted (click here), but there will be a whole host more throughout the year, keep your eyes peeled.
Here are some you can expect many of them exclusive: Chetham's Medieval Buildings; The Tour of Uninteresting Objects; The Principal Hotel; The Amazing Abandoned Mayfield Station; The Incredible Interiors Tour; Engels and Marx in Manchester; Suffragettes, Women and Manchester; The Dawn of the Railway Age; Great Speeches Made in Manchester; The Peterloo Massacre; The Classic Pub tour; Gothic Manchester; Haunted Tours; The Properly Ridiculous April Fool's Day Tour; Truly Madly Brutal (a celebration of post-war architecture); The Northern Quarter and Ancoats; Manchester and Literature; Salford's Incredible Chapel Street.
Tours outside the city centre include those up the Irk Valley (the Impossible Bridge and the Improbable Hill tour) plus tours in fascinating suburbs such as Chorlton, Clayton, Old Trafford, Didsbury, Whitworth Park and Victoria Park, Kersal, Platt Fields, The Quays.
In other words there is something for just about everybody. Each voucher is a handsome document with some lovely pictures that will be sent by email for you to print out.
TYPICAL DAILY STORIES, QUESTIONS, IMAGES sent to guests who buy a gift voucher
Tuesday 31 March, 2020
The daily fact – Anthony Burgess and the perfect (er...perhaps) cocktail
One of the Manchester characters with a tremendous joie de vivre was Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess - novelist, essayist, playwright, screen-writer, composer. Born in Harpurhey, the son of a pub landlord, his mother and sister were carried away by the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918/19. Burgess sarcastically referred to the First World War being followed by pestilence when he wrote later: ‘There was no doubt of the existence of a God: only the supreme being could contrive so brilliant an afterpiece to four years of unprecedented suffering and devastation.’
He was a lovably roguish. He was sacked as literary critic for the Yorkshire Post after he reviewed his own novel Inside Mr Enderby. The novel had been published under the pseudonym Joseph Kell, and the newspaper's editor did not know that Kell was Burgess. Burgess wrote of his own book: "This is, in many ways, a dirty book. It is full of bowel-blasts and flatulent borborygms, emetic meals...and halitosis. It may well make some people sick....It turns sex, religion, the State into a series of laughing-stocks. The book itself is a laughing-stock."
He loved a drink too, creating his own cocktail called Hangman's Blood. He described its preparation as follows: "Into a pint glass, doubles of gin, whisky, rum, port and brandy. A small bottle of stout is added and the whole topped up with Champagne. It tastes very smooth, induces a somewhat metaphysical elation, and rarely leaves a hangover."
When the good times return again The International Anthony Burgess Foundation on Cambridge Street is worth a visit.
I’ve got a literary tour of Manchester later this year which of course features Anthony Burgess.
Quiz question (try and answer these without looking up the answer)
Which nineteenth liberal economic philosophy is synonymous with the name Manchester and was once incorporated in the name of a building which is now a hotel?
Picture of the day
Let’s keep with Burgess. The Northern Quarter features the Cities of Hope often featuring huge images stretching across whole gable ends. It focuses on people across the world in difficult situations are seemingly excluded from society. This image just off Oak Street show on the left a child soldier by Hyuro and on the right Anthony Burgess by Tankpetrol – Clockwork Orange is about a dysfunctional and violent future society.
And today, an extra, a quote from Anthony Burgess’ autobiography with a killer last line.
In those days (the 20s and 30s), for a Mancunian to visit the capital was an exercise in condescension. London was a day behind Manchester in the arts, in commercial cunning, in economic philosophy. True, it had the monarch and the government and was gratuitously big. It seemed to have more history than Manchester, but history was no more than a tourist frippery. When foreigners came to Manchester, they came to learn, not to feed ravens and snap beefeaters. Manchester was generous and London was not. London had something of the air of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.
Anthony Burgess, Little Wilson and Big God, 1986
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Monday 23 March, 2020
Gift voucher holders daily fact - karoake
It was in 1975 that Roy Brooke from Stockport invented his Roy’s Sing-along Machine. His magic box full of backing tracks from classic songs allowed the mad, the lonely, the drunk and occasionally, the very talented, to read or sing the lyrics over the music. This was adopted by the Japanese and given the notorious name of karaoke, which translates as ‘empty orchestra’ and the rest is... tragedy or huge fun or even...history.
Quiz question (try and answer these without looking up the answer)
In what year and in what months were the Commonwealth Games held in Manchester?
Picture of the day
This is Thomas Dagnall’s uplifting sculpture from the 1980s called Archimedes. It shows the famous Greek mathematician and inventor leaping from the bath about to shout, ‘Eureka!’. This was when he’d worked out how to determine the volume of an object with an irregular shape.
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Wednesday 25 March, 2020
Gift voucher holders daily fact – Manchester’s record breaking season, 1937/38, but...
In 1936/37 season Manchester City won the First Division (today’s Premier League) for the first time under manager Wilf Wild. Manchester United were relegated. So it all looked good for the 1937/38 season. In front of goal it was superb with Peter Doherty, Eric Brook and Alex Herd in fine form. City scored 80 goals in 42 games, more than anyone else in the league. Another easy title then? Well, no. They also conceded 77 goals. Despite beating Leeds 6-2 in the penultimate game they were relegated. Before City’s more recent stability this 1937/38 season was one when City beat their own erratic reputation something like 6-2. They remain the only relegated side to have scored more goals than any other side including, in that case, Arsenal, the champions. They remain the only side to be relegated with a positive goal difference.
Quiz question (try and answer these without looking up the answer)
Which is the older football club in its very origins: City or United?
Picture of the day
Keeping with sport and given the Olympic news this week, here’s a picture of the 1900 Olympic waterpolo gold winning team – from Manchester. The whole Olympic episode reads like a screenplay waiting to be written. A working-class team from the inner suburbs of this smoky, industrial city, were chosen to represent Great Britain in Paris, the ‘city of love’. Manchester had the best teams and the best of the best was the Osborne Swimming Club from Collyhurst. Recruiting a couple of ringers they went off to Paris and crushed every other team: quarter-finals 12-0; semi-finals 10-1; final 7-2. In the final, in front of 5.000 spectators, they limited the number of shots on goal to avoid humiliating their opponent from Belgium. Write that screenplay someone. There was something charming about the 1900 Olympics. The games included tug-o-war and hot air ballooning.
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Thursday 26 March, 2020
Gift voucher holders daily fact – steam submarines, they don’t really work
The remarkable Reverend George William Garrett wasn’t a natural clergyman. Born in Moss Side, Manchester, he caught the inventing bug when his father sent him to Owen’s College, later Manchester University. After university he persuaded financiers to back his submarine project with £10,000. He had a 33 ton, steam-powered, submarine made at Birkenhead. He set sail for Portsmouth to claim the £60,000 prize the Royal Navy promised if his project worked. The air filtration systems failed and the sub surfaced at Rhyl. Garrett hired a steam yacht hoping to be towed to just off Portsmouth where he’d submerge and re-emerge in triumph. But the yacht broke down, the crew of the submarine went to fix it and the last man out left the hatch open, the submarine sank. A lifeboat came to rescue the crew, rammed the yacht and sank it. The name of the submarine was Resurgam, Latin for ‘I shall rise again’. It never has.
Garrett left the church and in pursuit of his submarine dreams travelled to Sweden, served with the Ottoman Navy, then failed at farming in Florida and became a US Army corporal. He died of tuberculosis in New York. His father, the vicar of Christ Church, Moss Side, died equally unfortunately; in the pulpit delivering a sermon on the danger of sudden death.
Quiz question (try and answer these without looking up the answer)
Name the five railway stations in the city centre, if the city centre is defined as the area of both Manchester and Salford inside the Mancunian Way, Trinity Way, Miller Street and Great Ancoats Street?
Picture of the day
This is the hugely scaled-up Vimto bottle on Granby Row in the city centre. Vimto was invented on this site with ‘secret ingredients’ in 1908 by JW Nichols as a temperance drink. It was supposed to be so good we’d never drink alcohol again. Fat chance. The name comes from an expression at the time, used by my grandparents as well, ‘vip and vim’, which meant you had lots of energy and get-up-and-go. Obviously contrasting this with the torpor induced by booze, He combined this expression with the word ‘tonic’ to create the brand name ‘Vimto’. This is sadly an anagram of vomit. The excellent and lively piece is by Kerry Morrison and was erected to celebrate the centenary of Vimto.
Tuesday 31 March, 2020
The daily fact – Anthony Burgess and the perfect (er...perhaps) cocktail
One of the Manchester characters with a tremendous joie de vivre was Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess - novelist, essayist, playwright, screen-writer, composer. Born in Harpurhey, the son of a pub landlord, his mother and sister were carried away by the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918/19. Burgess sarcastically referred to the First World War being followed by pestilence when he wrote later: ‘There was no doubt of the existence of a God: only the supreme being could contrive so brilliant an afterpiece to four years of unprecedented suffering and devastation.’
He was a lovably roguish. He was sacked as literary critic for the Yorkshire Post after he reviewed his own novel Inside Mr Enderby. The novel had been published under the pseudonym Joseph Kell, and the newspaper's editor did not know that Kell was Burgess. Burgess wrote of his own book: "This is, in many ways, a dirty book. It is full of bowel-blasts and flatulent borborygms, emetic meals...and halitosis. It may well make some people sick....It turns sex, religion, the State into a series of laughing-stocks. The book itself is a laughing-stock."
He loved a drink too, creating his own cocktail called Hangman's Blood. He described its preparation as follows: "Into a pint glass, doubles of gin, whisky, rum, port and brandy. A small bottle of stout is added and the whole topped up with Champagne. It tastes very smooth, induces a somewhat metaphysical elation, and rarely leaves a hangover."
When the good times return again The International Anthony Burgess Foundation on Cambridge Street is worth a visit.
I’ve got a literary tour of Manchester later this year which of course features Anthony Burgess.
Quiz question (try and answer these without looking up the answer)
Which nineteenth liberal economic philosophy is synonymous with the name Manchester and was once incorporated in the name of a building which is now a hotel?
Picture of the day
Let’s keep with Burgess. The Northern Quarter features the Cities of Hope often featuring huge images stretching across whole gable ends. It focuses on people across the world in difficult situations are seemingly excluded from society. This image just off Oak Street show on the left a child soldier by Hyuro and on the right Anthony Burgess by Tankpetrol – Clockwork Orange is about a dysfunctional and violent future society.
And today, an extra, a quote from Anthony Burgess’ autobiography with a killer last line.
In those days (the 20s and 30s), for a Mancunian to visit the capital was an exercise in condescension. London was a day behind Manchester in the arts, in commercial cunning, in economic philosophy. True, it had the monarch and the government and was gratuitously big. It seemed to have more history than Manchester, but history was no more than a tourist frippery. When foreigners came to Manchester, they came to learn, not to feed ravens and snap beefeaters. Manchester was generous and London was not. London had something of the air of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.
Anthony Burgess, Little Wilson and Big God, 1986
__________________________________
Monday 23 March, 2020
Gift voucher holders daily fact - karoake
It was in 1975 that Roy Brooke from Stockport invented his Roy’s Sing-along Machine. His magic box full of backing tracks from classic songs allowed the mad, the lonely, the drunk and occasionally, the very talented, to read or sing the lyrics over the music. This was adopted by the Japanese and given the notorious name of karaoke, which translates as ‘empty orchestra’ and the rest is... tragedy or huge fun or even...history.
Quiz question (try and answer these without looking up the answer)
In what year and in what months were the Commonwealth Games held in Manchester?
Picture of the day
This is Thomas Dagnall’s uplifting sculpture from the 1980s called Archimedes. It shows the famous Greek mathematician and inventor leaping from the bath about to shout, ‘Eureka!’. This was when he’d worked out how to determine the volume of an object with an irregular shape.
____________________________________
Wednesday 25 March, 2020
Gift voucher holders daily fact – Manchester’s record breaking season, 1937/38, but...
In 1936/37 season Manchester City won the First Division (today’s Premier League) for the first time under manager Wilf Wild. Manchester United were relegated. So it all looked good for the 1937/38 season. In front of goal it was superb with Peter Doherty, Eric Brook and Alex Herd in fine form. City scored 80 goals in 42 games, more than anyone else in the league. Another easy title then? Well, no. They also conceded 77 goals. Despite beating Leeds 6-2 in the penultimate game they were relegated. Before City’s more recent stability this 1937/38 season was one when City beat their own erratic reputation something like 6-2. They remain the only relegated side to have scored more goals than any other side including, in that case, Arsenal, the champions. They remain the only side to be relegated with a positive goal difference.
Quiz question (try and answer these without looking up the answer)
Which is the older football club in its very origins: City or United?
Picture of the day
Keeping with sport and given the Olympic news this week, here’s a picture of the 1900 Olympic waterpolo gold winning team – from Manchester. The whole Olympic episode reads like a screenplay waiting to be written. A working-class team from the inner suburbs of this smoky, industrial city, were chosen to represent Great Britain in Paris, the ‘city of love’. Manchester had the best teams and the best of the best was the Osborne Swimming Club from Collyhurst. Recruiting a couple of ringers they went off to Paris and crushed every other team: quarter-finals 12-0; semi-finals 10-1; final 7-2. In the final, in front of 5.000 spectators, they limited the number of shots on goal to avoid humiliating their opponent from Belgium. Write that screenplay someone. There was something charming about the 1900 Olympics. The games included tug-o-war and hot air ballooning.
_______________________________________
Thursday 26 March, 2020
Gift voucher holders daily fact – steam submarines, they don’t really work
The remarkable Reverend George William Garrett wasn’t a natural clergyman. Born in Moss Side, Manchester, he caught the inventing bug when his father sent him to Owen’s College, later Manchester University. After university he persuaded financiers to back his submarine project with £10,000. He had a 33 ton, steam-powered, submarine made at Birkenhead. He set sail for Portsmouth to claim the £60,000 prize the Royal Navy promised if his project worked. The air filtration systems failed and the sub surfaced at Rhyl. Garrett hired a steam yacht hoping to be towed to just off Portsmouth where he’d submerge and re-emerge in triumph. But the yacht broke down, the crew of the submarine went to fix it and the last man out left the hatch open, the submarine sank. A lifeboat came to rescue the crew, rammed the yacht and sank it. The name of the submarine was Resurgam, Latin for ‘I shall rise again’. It never has.
Garrett left the church and in pursuit of his submarine dreams travelled to Sweden, served with the Ottoman Navy, then failed at farming in Florida and became a US Army corporal. He died of tuberculosis in New York. His father, the vicar of Christ Church, Moss Side, died equally unfortunately; in the pulpit delivering a sermon on the danger of sudden death.
Quiz question (try and answer these without looking up the answer)
Name the five railway stations in the city centre, if the city centre is defined as the area of both Manchester and Salford inside the Mancunian Way, Trinity Way, Miller Street and Great Ancoats Street?
Picture of the day
This is the hugely scaled-up Vimto bottle on Granby Row in the city centre. Vimto was invented on this site with ‘secret ingredients’ in 1908 by JW Nichols as a temperance drink. It was supposed to be so good we’d never drink alcohol again. Fat chance. The name comes from an expression at the time, used by my grandparents as well, ‘vip and vim’, which meant you had lots of energy and get-up-and-go. Obviously contrasting this with the torpor induced by booze, He combined this expression with the word ‘tonic’ to create the brand name ‘Vimto’. This is sadly an anagram of vomit. The excellent and lively piece is by Kerry Morrison and was erected to celebrate the centenary of Vimto.
'Just a quick note to say I love these updates! I test my Dad on the quiz questions over lunch each day during lockdown.
Thanks and keep them coming!' Lucy Wallwork, 8 April. 2020
‘These daily updates are great. I've shared them amongst my family who love them. Keep up the good work,’ Jon Garrett, 2 April 2020
‘Loving these stories, questions and images everyday, please send yesterday’s, lost it, can’t find it anywhere and I love looking forward to receiving them,’ Lisa Williams, 2 April 2020
‘I’m loving my daily updates, thank you,’ Jill Burdett, 1 April 2020
Thanks and keep them coming!' Lucy Wallwork, 8 April. 2020
‘These daily updates are great. I've shared them amongst my family who love them. Keep up the good work,’ Jon Garrett, 2 April 2020
‘Loving these stories, questions and images everyday, please send yesterday’s, lost it, can’t find it anywhere and I love looking forward to receiving them,’ Lisa Williams, 2 April 2020
‘I’m loving my daily updates, thank you,’ Jill Burdett, 1 April 2020