Northern QuarterStart your Manchester Literature Festival experience as you mean to go on soaking up the city atmosphere in the Northern Quarter, where Manchester creatives have made their spiritual home. Here among the design agencies, boutiques and vintage shops are craft beer houses and independent coffee shops galore, perfect for some light pre-festival browsing and grazing. If its brunch-time, it’s got to be Common or Koffee Pot.

There’s shiny vinyl to be had in Piccadilly Records or try the neighbourhood’s penchant for tea and cake with sticky delights at Fig + Sparrow. The new independent coffee-shop-cum-bookstore, Chapter 1 Books, is perfect for kicking off your shoes and curling up with a good read.

Art is everywhere, embedded in the pavements, on the old public toilets in Stevenson Square, on street corners or more conventionally in excellent galleries like the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art and Manchester Craft & Design Centre where you can buy handmade crafts and jewellery direct from the maker. Art even marks the Quarter boundaries with the blue and white tiled street-signs made by the local Majolica Works.

At night, take in a live performance with gigs at the Band on the Wall or Night & Day; try some jazz with your pizza at Matt & Phreds; or head to the diminutive pub The Castle for live music and some of the city’s best live literature nights tucked away in the snug.

ITINERARY No.15 MANCHESTER LITERATURE FESTIVAL 12—25 October 2015

We like words in Manchester. This city has inspired novels, poems, political speeches and song lyrics, many still tucked away in the venues where the Manchester Literature Festival sprawls. That’s right, the joy of MLF is that it takes the whole city as its site, and, companion piece to your well-thumbed brochure with its staggering 80+ events in 14 days, here’s a handy-guide to help you get around.

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Northern Quarter1 Common aplacecalledcommon.co.uk2 Koffee Pot thekoffeepot.co.uk3 Picadilly Records piccadillyrecords.com4 Fig + Sparrow figandsparrow.co.uk5 Chapter 1 Books twitter.com/chapter1uk6 Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art cfcca.org.uk7 Manchester Craft and Design Centre craftanddesign.com8 Band on the Wall bandonthewall.org9 Night and Day nightnday.org10 Matt & Phreds mattandphreds.com11 The Castle thecastlehotel.info

Check venue websites for opening times.Top: Picadilly RecordsBottom: Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art

Cathedral QuarterQuietly becoming one of the nicest spots in the city centre, the Cathedral Quarter oozes with medieval charm.Manchester Cathedral is where you will be heading for this year’s Gaeia Manchester Sermon where Elif Shafak takes to the pulpit. Its higgledy exterior (thanks to extensions and bombs) belies a building that is 600 years old, recently restored again to better set off its stained glass, much of it gloriously modern.

The path behind takes you to a patch of grass connecting the entrances of the National Football Museum (a must-see for football fans of all denominations) and Chetham’s Library, the world’s oldest public library where the books, then more valuable than the building itself, were once chained to the shelves. Here amongst 100s of treasures is the first printed edition of John Donne’s poems and perhaps most famously, the desk where Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels penned The Condition of the Working Class in England. For MLF, Eleanor Marx (yes, daughter) is the subject of a conversation between her biographer Rachel Holmes, and journalist Anita Sethi. (15 October, 8pm, Portico Library).

Food? Well, for stellar afternoon teas it’s got to be Proper Tea; with wines and nibbles at Hanging Ditch Wine Merchants; or enjoy the glamour in San Carlo Bottega on the second-floor of Selfridges. With all the digging going on for the Metrolink tram expansion, the view outside is admittedly looking a little grim, blurred a little by the ten slowly-turning Tilted Windmills by Manchester-based “punk professor”, John Hyatt.

For now, let the the road-works be your guide, and follow them down to the Royal Exchange where a theatre is poised for take-off inside a Victorian Great Hall. Productions here enjoy a critical reputation that echoes its past commercial success - once 80% of the world’s cotton was sold here - and many of the festival’s headline events will squat inside the set of a powerful revival of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (until 24 Oct, times vary). For food and drink, nearby Mr Thomas’s Chophouse is a Manchester institution with its narrow bar, tiled walls and steaming suet puddings.

Top: Manchester CathedralBottom: The Royal Exchange

Cathedral Quarter1 Manchester Cathedral manchestercathedral.org 2 National Football Museum nationalfootballmuseum.com3 Chetham’s Library chethams.org.uk 4 Proper Tea properteadeveloper.com5 Hanging Ditch Wine Merchants hangingditch.com6 San Carlo Bottega sancarlobottega.co.uk7 The Royal Exchange royalexchange.co.uk8 Mr Thomas’s Chophouse tomschophouse.com

Check venue websites for opening times.

Salford & Spinningfields Beyond the Cathedral, the River Irwell marks the divide between Manchester and Salford, where herons and cormorants fish from the banks. A detour to the very far reaches of The Crescent delivers up the lifetime work of labour historians Ruth and Edmund Frow at The Working Class Movement Library, a unique archive of material dating back to the 1760s. It’s a bit of a walk (or bus ride) but a stop by The New Oxford pub on Bexley Square to sample one of their 100+ beers will put you right, or call in at Lupo Caffè Italiano on Chapel Street for truly the best coffee and Sicilian home cooking, outside of, well, Sicily.

Back over the river is the People’s History Museum where Paul Mason and Robert Harris fans should make political pilgrimage. Alongside the exhibits and political archives is Show Me the Money, a compelling exhibition charting boom and bust. On one wall is an unassuming cash point. There’s no slot to insert your card – instead, it puts out a £5 note at a random point throughout the day. Now there’s an incentive.

Top: Show Me the Money at People’s History Museum Untitled 2 from Real Fight Club © Immo KlinkBottom: The Working Class Movement Library

Salford & Spinningfields 1 The Working Class Movement Library wcml.org.uk 2 The New Oxford thenewoxford.com3 Lupo Caffè Italiano lupocaffe.co.uk4 People’s History Museum phm.org.uk

City CentreFor book-lovers the city centre offers up a stack of libraries and archives. First amongst equals, architecturally at least, is Basil Champneys’ stunning confection, John Ryland’s Library, whose atmospheric neo-Gothic columns protect the world’s oldest remaining fragment of New Testament text.

Not to be beaten, the Central Library’s iconic rotunda is inspired by Rome’s Pantheon and in the hushed surrounds of the domed reading room it’s mischievous fun to test the echo. A recent transformation has stripped the building back to reveal elegant 1930s beauty and downstairs its quite possible lose a happy afternoon immersed in films from the BFI or North West Film Archive.

Tucked up a flight of stairs off Mosley Street is The Portico, the city’s oldest subscription library. Its member list reads like a literary who’s who: Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Peter ‘thesaurus’ Roget. Eric Cantona, the poet-footballer, loved this bolt-hole, its domed ceiling and hogwarts-like reading rooms, a worthy setting for many of the festival’s most intimate events.

Food in these parts abound. Simon Rogan’s acclaimed cuisine in the Midland Hotel sets the bar at one end of the dining spectrum, with Chinatown delivering authentic Asian punches at the other. Try Siam Smiles for Thai food worth travelling for or cut straight to the fine wines of Cooper Street’s Salut nearby.

Manchester Art Gallery holds pride of cultural place around here, with Matthew Darbyshire’s An Exhibition for Modern Living supplying the inspiration for author Ned Beauman’s MLF commission.

City Centre1 John Rylands Library library.manchester.ac.uk/rylands 2 Central Library librarylive.co.uk3 The Portico theportico.org.uk4 The Midland Hotel the-french.co.uk5 Siam Smiles facebook.com/siamsmilescafe6 Salut salut.co.uk7 Manchester Art Gallery manchesterartgallery.org

Check venue websites for opening times.

Top: The French at the Midland HotelBottom: Matthew Darbyshire’s An Exhibition for Modern Living at Manchester Art Gallery

Oxford Road and environsLet’s start a bus ride away at the Whitworth. Newly reopened and festooned with awards, its beautiful gallery spaces house a mix of historical displays and contemporary commissions.Heading the billings this month are Bedwry Williams, Cornelia Parker and Richard Forster. The Whitworth’s busy café floats in the trees overlooking an art garden and the park.

Whilst easy to spend a day here, turn right for a trio of historic buildings that speak volumes about Manchester’s past: Elizabeth Gaskell’s House, the Pankhurst Centre and Victoria Baths, once described as Manchester’s “water palace”. Or head back left, through the 70,000 students, two universities, theatres, a conservatoire, a concert hall, an art-school, five hospitals and a workforce of 60,000 that make up this part of town.

En-route is Manchester Museum home to some six million objects, as well as surprising contemporary exhibitions such as The Phantoms of Congo River. Photographs by Nyaba Ouedraogo take Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel Heart of Darkness as a starting point.

Ignoring the temptations of the Grade I-listed former Deaf Institute and second-hand shop Goodstock, there are great places around here to refuel such as street food specialists Kukoos. A new Lebanese restaurant Bakchich is right around the corner from the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, where Kuwaiti writer Mai Al-Nakib is reading as part of the festival and there’s no better way to browse Burgess’ numerous publications in the bookshop than with a glass of the Foundation’s house beer in hand.

Finally, to HOME, this new kid on the block only opened in May 2015. The stripped back industrial chic décor, cosy sofas and delicious pizzas are a comforting nod back to its old Cornerhouse roots, but the new galleries, theatres and cinemas screens are in a different league. Throughout the festival you can catch 1927’s Golem, described as a giant, graphic novel brought to life (until 17 Oct, times vary). …

And if all that has whetted your appetite for more then how about downloading the new Manchester Cultural Walking Tour, narrated by DJ Mary Anne Hobbs, and get exploring. Available free on iTunes.

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Oxford Road and environs 1 The Whitworth whitworth.manchester.ac.uk2 Elizabeth Gaskell’s House elizabethgaskellhouse.co.uk3 The Pankhurst Centre thepankhurstcentre.org.uk4 Victoria Baths victoriabaths.org.uk5 Manchester Museum museum.manchester.ac.uk6 Deaf Institute thedeafinstitute.co.uk7 Goodstock vinspired.com/goodstock8 Kukoos kukoos.co.uk9 Bakchich bakchich.co.uk10 International Anthony Burgess Foundation anthonyburgess.org11 HOME homemcr.org

Check venue websites for opening times.

Middle: Nyaba Ouedraogo: The Phantoms of Congo River at Manchester Museum

With thanks to all the partners who make Manchester such an exciting place to live, study, and visit.