Isabella Varley was born at 10 Oldham Street into ‘a family of chemists who had an artistic bent’. By the age of ten Isabella showed real skill for sewing, embroidery and tatting lace. She was good and her father sold her lace caps in his store.

She became a schoolteacher publishing poetry and then in 1846 she married journalist, speaker and poet George Linnaeus Banks and took his name which included an exotic reference to the Swedish Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, the naming of organisms. George had an unreliable income and they travelled around the country for work. He was also a heavy drinker which was unusual for a Methodist. Eight children were born although only three survived into adulthood.

Isabella helped support the family by writing and publishing a needlework design monthly. As George’s alcoholism became more pronounced Isabella became the main breadwinner but her health suffered. She started writing The Manchester Man during one recuperation period. It was her only real success and the work that would live on after her death.

The Manchester Man was published in three volumes in 1876 and is a fictionalised account of the growth of Manchester as the defining metropolis of the Industrial Revolution. In a grand sweep of epic storylines, it charts the rise of Jabez Clegg beginning with his rescue as a baby floating down the River Irwell in 1799, appropriately in a Moses basket. Among the many twists and turns in the book is the rivalry with Clegg’s posh nemesis Laurence Aspinall. Both are rivals for the love of Augusta Ashton. There is romance and drama but also some of the best accounts of real events written such as the Peterloo Massacre, the Corn Law riots and much else.

It is fitting Isabella Banks Street links to Tony Wilson Place as the words on Tony Wilson’s gravestone at Southern Cemetery are taken from Banks’ novel, The Manchester Man. They read ‘Mutability is the epitaph of worlds, change alone is changeless. People drop out of the history of a life as of a land, though their work or their influence remains.’

These words could apply both to Wilson and Banks.

Another, less poignant, measure of immortality maybe the fact two bars in Manchester have been named after characters in The Manchester Man, Jabez Clegg and the still operating Joshua Brooks on Princess Street named after Clegg’s eccentric school master.

James started out as a gifted academic with a PhD and the top first-class honours in Chemistry from Glasgow University before being recruited by ICI in the 1950s. From there he was seconded into US Naval Intelligence as a rocket propulsives expert on the military’s space and missile programme, the forerunner of NASA. Whilst still in his 20s he was accorded the rank of Brigadier General. 

In 1966 he moved to the Swiss drugs company, Geigy, as a main board director – firstly as Research Director then Managing Director and Director of Corporate Planning & Development after the merger with Ciba. In 1987 he was awarded an OBE for services to industry, these achievements having been recognised some years earlier by his election to the Atheneum Club, Pall Mall and to the Royal Society of Edinburgh as a Fellow. His contribution to science and the arts had been similarly acknowledged in his being elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. 

During the late 1980s & 1990s James turned his attention to Manchester’s urban and cultural renaissance. He was an inspiring, innovative leader and tireless champion from his positions as Chairman of the Central Manchester Development Corporation, Chairman of the Royal Northern College of Music, Chairman of the Manchester Science Park and Chairman of the Museum of Science and Industry. It was during this time he also provided strategic vision to The Greater Manchester Police, The Manchester 2000 Olympic Bid and the Princes Trust for the North West. 

Thanks to strong partnerships with Manchester City Council and the private sector, the Central Manchester Development Corporation under James’ chairmanship leaves an enduring legacy in the Bridgewater Hall, Metrolink and the regenerated districts of Castlefield, The Gay Village and The Northern Quarter which we all enjoy today.  

Above all his public office, James remained first and foremost a family man. This was his greatest role and the one which gave him most pride.  

A Tribute by Tom Bloxham MBE Chairman, Urban Splash –Memorial Service for the Life & Work of Dr James Grigor, Manchester Cathedral 2011

I am sorry that I cannot be with you today, but I am speaking about regeneration at an international conference in Holland and the fact that I have been invited as a so called “expert” is in no small part down to James Grigor.  

I am sure you will hear more about how James very literally changed the face of Manchester; saving Castlefield from the bulldozers; building the Bridgewater Hall; creating Manchester’s vibrant Canal Street (despite a somewhat homophobic government at the time), creating thousands of jobs in the city centre and helping establish the ambition that Manchester now has as being one of the world’s great cities that we are all so proud of. 

But I want to tell you all today about the influence James had on me. 

I was a naive young man in my late 20’s, who had some big ideas, but little experience, track record or credibility. In 1990 I bought a near derelict building called Ducie House in a very run down part of Manchester at the back of Piccadilly railway station. The building was due to be demolished and turned into a car park. CMDC (Central Manchester Development Corporation) who obviously had a very brave (or fool hardy) chairman, refused the demolition (and I subsequently found out on very thin or no legal grounds) forcing the developers to put the building into auction, rather than demolish. I bought it prior to it going into auction with a vision of creating a home for Manchester’s growing creative industries. 

It would have been so easy for the established CMDC to dismiss me as a crack pot, no hoper, idealist, inexperienced, without covenant or simply as too risky a partner, but having made a point of meeting up with the chairman, James Grigor OBE and persuading him that I had a vision and the drive to achieve it, he believed my story (and no doubt put I presume some pressure on his more sceptical officers). CMDC supported my plan for the development of Ducie House. 

We hired the then young Ian Simpson to renovate the building, we filled it with loads of small businesses, including bands like 808 State and Simply Red, as well as film producers, fashion designers, artists, recording studios and graphic designers.  

Ducie House has gone on to help literally thousands of businesses establish themselves in Manchester and I went onto establish Urban Splash. 

Much of this is due to the faith and trust Dr James Grigor OBE put into a young and no doubt somewhat brash Tom Bloxham and I will always remember and be grateful to this great man for the start he gave me.  

She developed an early love of theatre. Given her temperament and her desire to find an avenue through which to express her frustrations with society this is understandable. She was after all the model of the young independent woman of the times and fought for the women’s vote, sexual equality and sexual freedom.  

Horniman was also a lover of cycling. She regularly travelled abroad alone, wearing trousers, cycling on a man’s bicycle stating “ladies’ bicycles are mere hen-roosts…serious travelling on them is ridiculous”. George Bernard Shaw was not alone in considering her trips on bikes as “monstrous and unheard of”. Horniman didn’t care. 

It was on these trips she discovered the French Impressionists in Paris, while in Germany she was impressed by subsidised theatres. An admirer of the Irish poet, WB Yeats, she spent five years as his unpaid secretary. She also financed The Abbey Theatre in Dublin which staged plays by Yeats and new Irish writers. 

Horniman could afford unpaid work because she had money, lots of money. In 1894 she inherited from her grandfather £40,000, more than £6m at today’s prices. Given her well-known wealth and as a nod to her father’s trade her nickname was ‘Hornibags’. 

She came to Manchester in 1907 taking over the Midland Hotel Theatre. In 1908 she moved to the Gaiety on Peter Street where she was the UK pioneer of modern repertory (a repertory theatre has a permanent company of actors). She had celebrated designer Frank Matcham (Tower Ballroom, Blackpool) refurbish the Gaiety with the best sightlines and acoustics. She was involved in every aspect of theatre life, the management, the design of programmes, the reading of prospective plays. She cultivated equality too and didn’t want ‘stars’. In her view all the actors should share out roles big and small. With paid coffee breaks and other perks Horniman was known as the ‘actor’s best friend’.  

At the Gaiety she produced more than 200 plays, over 100 of which were original. It was during this time the ‘Manchester School’ was formed with playwrights such as WS Houghton, Allan Monkhouse and Harold Brighouse which resulted in plays such as Hindle Wakes and Hobson’s Choice. Actors and directors included the celebrated Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson who eventually married. She introduced the ‘theatre of ideas’ to Manchester and the works of writers such as Henrik Ibsen.  

On gala evenings Annie Horniman would travel down from her flat at 110 High Street and make a grand entrance smoking a cigar, which was considered scandalous, wearing a monocle, which was considered daring, and wearing an extravagant brocade dress, which was considered exotic. Sybil Thorndike once described her as wearing “beautiful stuff that you would only think of for curtains”. Horniman was also known for her delight in jewellery. One piece included an ‘enormous elaborate dragon pendant with ruby eyes and made of 300 opals’. 

She was forced to sell the Gaiety in 1921 for £52,000 but not before the University of Manchester had conferred upon her an honorary Masters. The Gaiety inspired civic theatre in the city which led to the Library Theatre and now the theatres at HOME arts centre in First Street.  

His parents worked as machinists in a raincoat factory. He was evacuated during the War, first to Blackpool and then to Colne in Lancashire.

After carrying out his National Service in the Navy, Rosenthal joined the newly established Granada Television, initially writing advertising copy. But his ability to capture the characters and voices of working-class Manchester soon brought him to the attention of the drama department, where Coronation Street had just been launched. He wrote episode 31, and went on to script another 129 episodes, including, according to Corrie fans, some of the show’s most memorable scenes.

As a writer and producer at Granada, Rosenthal was involved in numerous productions. He created two comedy series, The Dustbinmen and The Lovers, and contributed to the ground-breaking current affairs satire That Was The Week That Was. In the early 1970s, he embarked on the run of feature-length television plays that would earn him widespread acclaim. He won three Baftas for Best Single Play in three consecutive years, with The Evacuees (1975), the story of his wartime evacuation; Bar Mitzvah Boy (1976), about a Jewish boy’s coming-of-age; and Spend Spend Spend (1977), the biopic of lottery winner Viv Nicholson. His Northern, Jewish working-class roots informed most of his original screenplays over the next three decades, including The Knowledge, The Chain, the TV film London’s Burningwhich sparked the long-running series, and (with Barbra Streisand) the movie Yentl.

In 1969, Rosenthal met actress Dame Maureen Lipman, a member of Granada’s experimental Stables Theatre Company, which was housed in the former stables of the Manchester to Liverpool Railway (now on the estate of arts space Factory International). Rosenthal and Lipman married in 1973 and had two children, writers Amy and Adam. Lipman inspired and featured in some of his best work. In 2015 she unveiled Jack Rosenthal Street, a street dedicated to him, on First Street, close to HOME arts centre; apt given his contribution to the entertainment industry.

Alongside his observant eye for the drama in everyday life, Rosenthal was a keen amateur sculptor. His subjects reflected his passion for Manchester United and included Bobby Charlton, Eric Cantona and Ryan Giggs. He listed one of his recreations as obsessively ‘checking Manchester United’s score, minute by minute’.

Rosenthal died from multiple myeloma in 2004, and was writing almost to the end.

His work is remembered for its warm humour and deep humanity. The Guardian obituary called him ‘television’s Charles Dickens, inexhaustible, ever inventive, usually scaling the heights… rarely failing to find rich comedy in every walk of life.’

Osborne remembered Sir Howard as “not only the most important civil servant in the region or in local governance but the most important civil servant nationally because he actively pursued change rather than simply reacting to situations. He was an example to other cities and the civil service itself in achieving transformative results.”

People who worked with him in his role as Manchester’s Chief Executive from 1998-2017 never miss an opportunity to emphasise his significance, his ‘magic touch’.

This is what former Council Leader and present Member of Parliament Graham Stringer says: “In an objective sense Howard was a local government officer in name only, he should be much more accurately categorised as a social entrepreneur. From whatever world people came they believed that Howard understood their problems and he could help by aligning Manchester’s interests with theirs.

“Property developers believed he understood property, airlines were convinced he understood aviation, bus operators reckoned him an expert in urban congestion and sports administrators were confident he was an expert in organising multi sports events.”

Sir Howard was born in Cheetham Hill. He spent the majority of his working life at Manchester City Council starting as a junior clerk (or as a ‘pot washer’ as he once described) and working his way to the top. He devoted his whole career to Manchester.

Despite his high profile he was a private man in many ways and a big family man. Nobody could be in any doubt where his football affiliations lay; it was Manchester City all the way and he witnessed the 2023 Treble success (Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League), which was the pinnacle.

Not so well known was his love of Lego and how this workaholic gentleman would spend hours assembling Lego constructions with his children and grandchildren.

That’s apt. Dreaming schemes and delivering them was at the heart of what Sir Howard did. With his optimism and canniness he was a key part in the renaissance of Manchester and its perception across the globe.

Sir Howard could never be considered a beacon of fashion but he had a ‘look’. His unmistakeable trademark was a dark scarf wrapped around his neck inside a building or outside, rain or shine, whatever the temperature. That and a mischievous grin accompanied by a characteristic twinkle in his eyes.

Across the city centre and beyond, the dramatic changes in Manchester are unthinkable without the input of Sir Howard, First Street itself is evidence of this. SportsCity with the Etihad Stadium and Co-op Live, Ancoats and New Islington, developments at Great Jackson Street, NOMA, the Metrolink expansion, the development of the Universities and so many other projects and schemes are evidence of the physical changes he facilitated. Not everything went as he planned but most things did.

But there’s more to it than that. Sir Howard Bernstein’s astute direction, often behind the scenes, helped develop something else, that boost in confidence that helped make Manchester the UK’s can-do city.