Walking tours and West African fashion: The Portico’s brilliantly diverse March programme

Comprising a breathtakingly exhaustive set of notes produced over 50 years, Steve Little’s collection of writings relating to Manchester’s architecture and industrial past is one of the most comprehensive first-hand resources available about the city’s social history. On Sat 11 Mar, Steve will join The Portico in conversation about ‘Manchester’s social and built history’ with excerpts from his collection, which he has gifted to the library, as well as a discussion about the utility of working documents as vital archival resources for historians and researchers.

Taking place on Fri 24 Mar, Jill Liddington launches her new book As Good As Marriage, the hotly anticipated sequel to Female Fortune which continues the story of Anne Lister, dubbed ‘the first modern lesbian’, whose diaries drew a phenomenal amount of international posthumous intrigue following the successful BBC and HBO series Gentleman Jack. Partly written in secret code and with a word count approaching the five-million mark, Lister’s journals reveal her effervescent intellect during a time of gendered societal oppression. In As Good As Marriage, Liddington’s edited transcriptions follow Anne through the early stages of her unconventional ‘marriage’ to local heiress Ann Walker.

Led by ‘Rambler in Residence’ Anita Sethi, Spring Hope is the first in a series of ‘Walk-Writeshops’ running from late March to June in which visitors will stroll around different areas of Central Manchester to find inspiration in the theme of the walk. Spring Hope’s introductory ramble celebrates the increase in daylight hours and emphasises using nature to ‘walk through worries’.