In which we reflect on themes introduced in these pages
©BBC
Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain. The happy highways where I went And cannot come again.
A.E. Houseman A Shropshire Lad
When Britain first, at heaven’s command, Arose from out the azure main, This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sung this strain: ”Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never will be slaves.”
James Thompson Alfred: A Masque
By no stretch of the imagination is Manchester a picturesque city. It is however, emphatically if unconventionally beautiful. In common with all things beautiful it is fundamentally flawed. It has a compulsion to preen and show off. It is narcissistic, contrary and wayward, and yet you cannot help but love it. It is both admirable and maddening.
Chris Lethbridge Diverse City
One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
G.K. Chesterton The Hammer of God
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
G.K. Chesterton What’s Wrong With the World
And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark satanic mills?
William Blake Milton
Oh, me good friend, Mr.Wilberforce, make we free! God Almighty thank ye! God Almighty thank ye! God Almighty, make we free!
A Barbados slave from 1816
For Manchester is the place where people do things…. “Don’t talk about what you are going to do, do it.” That is the Manchester habit. And in the past through the manifestation of this quality the word Manchester became a synonym for energy and freedom and the right to do and to think without shackles.
Sir Edward Abbott Parry What the Judge Saw