A walking tour of the city inspired by The Night Brother Novel is coming to Manchester

A Gothic style novel inspired by the streets and stories of late nineteenth century Manchester – ‘The Night Brother’(2017) by Rosie Garland – is soon going to be coming to life, in the form of a unique walking tour on Saturday 3rd November at 3pm - 4.30pm.devised by Rosie herself and local guide Anne Beswick.

This walk will be titled ‘Manchester Dark, Manchester Light - the inspiration behind The Night Brother’ and certainly is special.

‘The Night Brother’ is after all a novel of urban exploration, familial intensity and a dark delve into Manchester at the turn of the twentieth century. Guests will be able to ponder this as they will take in the sites of the city – including Northern Quarter backstreets, Victorian markets and subterranean spaces.

The tour will be led by Rosie and Anne together, for a truly engaging experience. Rosie is a novelist and poet, as well as a singer with post-punk band The March Violets and also performs as Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen. Anne Beswick is a recognised guide at Manchester Guided Tours, and her walks to date have included the likes of Manchester Architecture, Gaskell in Town & at Plymouth Grove and a Gothic Manchester tour.

The Night Brother itself follows in the footsteps of young siblings Edie and Gnome: with Gnome revelling in the city streets during the night-time, whilst Edie feels increasingly exhausted – a challenging dilemma driven by the nature of the relationship the pair hold. 

The walk – which falls just in time for Halloween in the City 2018 - will incorporate a number of locations that inspired the novel. Anne will tell guests of the history behind places both past and present, starting out at Manchester Craft and Design Centre, which used to be part of a market at the time The Night Brother is set.

The walk was created by Anne and Rosie coming together to co-ordinate a route which both connected to the book and still could connect to the current cityscape – and popular locations such as Albert Square and Manchester Art Gallery are also included, but with a flavour of The Night Brother. According to Manchester-based author Rosie, whose book has already gathered great acclaim since its publication in 2017:

 “I love to create reading events that are out of the ordinary. Something more than simply listening to an author talk. I’ve been struck by the positive feedback about the way I portray Manchester as a character in the novel. It set me thinking about creating a walking tour, where we stroll around Manchester landmarks that feature in The Night Brother, plus hear excerpts from the novel.”

Walking and words seen to be a winning combination, especially considering the dark themes of Rosie’s novel, which had Anne inspired:

“I had seen Rosie doing a reading at John Rylands Library. The Night Brother is so firmly set in Manchester around the turn of the twentieth century that it is perfect for a walking tour,” Anne told HAUNT. “As a local guide I am interested in lots of the issues in the book. I do walks and talks on Gothic Manchester and on Manchester Women and the Pankhursts. Rosie has very carefully used the streets of Manchester as her setting. Not just a generic late-Victorian city but actual buildings and streets. I found that this made the novel much more vivid and was keen to work with Rosie.”

The walk they have created will last for an hour and a half, with the route stretching from the Northern Quarter to Albert Square via a number of key stopping areas. The starting point will be Manchester Craft and Design Centre, which was deliberately chosen, according to Rosie:

“The Night Brother is set in the late nineteenth century, when the world was brought to the heart of Manchester via the Ship Canal. There was a vast, bustling market area around Shudehill. One of the few original buildings to survive is the Craft Centre. Originally the fish market, it’s still a marketplace, though the items on sale are very different!”

However, Rosie was keen to emphasize that one of her most-loved locations on this walk is a place you may never have considered the history of before:

“A definite favourite is the Old Telephone Exchange at 5 New York Street. It’s now an office building, the kind you could walk past without noticing. However, a century ago, it was buzzing with activity. The world was changing. One of the big changes was that many women were entering paid employment for the first time. A job that was seen as suitable for a lady was operator in a telephone exchange. My heroine, Edie Latchford, is one such operator. “

However, as highlighted by Rosie’s reflections on the walk itself, a key issue which presented itself when the route was being devised, is the fact that many of the buildings in use at the time The Night Brother is set, no longer remain. Rosie reflected:

“Manchester still has many of its original nineteenth century buildings, especially in the city centre. However, a lot has been demolished, for example the original Manchester Infirmary on Piccadilly, the Old Library on King Street and the terraced houses of nineteenth century Hulme. Luckily, Manchester Central Library has fabulous archives and I couldn’t have researched The Night Brother without their help.

“I would so love to build a time machine and visit nineteenth century Hulme. In The Night Brother, it’s where Edie and her brother grow up. Wouldn’t it be amazing to walk through that labyrinth of streets, see the beerhouses on every corner, listen to the clank of trams? Then again – we do have time machines – they’re called books…”

Thankfully, enough of The Night Brother’s cityscape still exists – and Anne felt confident that both past and present could be pulled together for an immersive experience inspired by both fiction and fact alike:

“Right from the start when Rosie outlined the plot and setting, I knew this would be a good fit.” Said Anne. “Then I read the book and it just became more vivid.  I know many of the places that Rosie has used. Her research has been very thorough and the story is both Victorian gothic and relevant for today.

“I know the stories behind the development of Manchester so, for example, I can use my knowledge of what we now call the Northern Quarter and how it developed to fill in how Rosie's characters worked and lived there. Manchester still has many of the buildings that are in the novel.  We are so used to seeing these buildings, they are just part of Manchester's background, that we don't think about the people or stories that happened there in a past, parallel world. That has been fascinating.”

The creation of the walk in time for the Halloween in the City 2018 series of events, is also a nod to Rosie’s fascination with the weird and wonderful side of Manchester. She also performs regularly in the city and has plenty of words to say regarding the gothic inspiration of this place in particular:

“I came from the DIY ethic of punk. When I moved to Manchester in the late 80s its industrious, can-do, will-do, stuff-you-if-you-say-I-can’t-do attitude was a good fit, right from the start. I love its history: whether industrial, political, radical, suffragette, literary or queer.

“From where I’m standing, Manchester is a gothic gem: from the majesty of the Town Hall, to the breathtaking John Rylands Library, to the gargoyles of the Cathedral – and all points in between. I love each grimy brick, each gothic furbelow. It’s no surprise that the gothic and uncanny inform my fiction. Yes, The Night Brother is set in down-to-earth, industrial Manchester. However, the central characters – Edie and her brother Gnome - are possibly my oddest creations to date. After all, the novel has been described as ‘Orlando meets Jekyll and Hyde’…”

So whether you have read The Night Brother or not, come and experience the walk for a historical stroll round the city you won’t forget – tickets are available online.

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Photo credit: Book cover - Borough Press, Author picture - Rachel Saunders.