Manchester: Alchemical City (R4) | iPlayer
Tunics for Goalposts (5Live) | iPlayer
Writing the Century: My Greenham (R4) | iPlayer
I wanted to love Alchemical City, Jeanette Winterson’s musings on Manchester: she’s a heroine of mine, and Manchester is the city I grew up in, the city that made me grow up. Her week-long series of 15-minute programmes started promisingly: she went back to AD 79, when the area was ruled by local tribes called the Brigantes. They had a female warrior leader – Queen Cartimandua – and the reason why those who live in Manchester are called Mancunians, said Winterson, is because the area was called Mamuciam first. She suggested that it was for the same reason that most Mancunians called their mother “Mam”: a warming thought.
Winterson had a theory: that Manchester is “alchemical” – it turns lead into gold – which she rooted in the fact that Elizabeth I sent alchemist John Dee to be warden of Manchester’s church (now cathedral). It’s a nice idea, with appealing magic: a city that transforms base metal into something precious, tough times into art. But no theory can explain everything, no size fits all.
Winterson kept up an oddly upbeat, hilarious tone throughout. She didn’t consult with many experts – a couple from the city’s Museum of Science and Industry – and, historically, she kept hopping about. She almost skipped through the Peterloo massacre, neglecting to mention how many people died. I would have liked more on Manchester’s Jewish and Irish communities, and its universities and students. That’s just opinion. But it was on Thursday, when Winterson got to Manchester’s music scene, that things went haywire. You can’t call Simply Red’s music northern soul – it’s the wrong term. You can’t announce the arrival of Madchester and play the Smiths. There are too many of us who remember those times, how they really were, what they actually meant, to make basic mistakes of fact and tone. In the end, by gambolling through Manchester’s history, by squishing it to fit her purpose, Winterson came over as sentimental – so weird, from her! – and didn’t always serve her central theory. She’s still a heroine though.
On 5 Live they were doing the opposite: debunking a long-held myth. Tunics for Goldposts told the story of the first world war football match between German and British soldiers during a truce on Christmas Day. We love that story, but it isn’t entirely true (there is proof that they did play football, but it wasn’t exactly a match, more a “melee”). This programme examined its myth, and told the tales of footballers who signed up to serve, of the Middlesex regiment known as the Football Battalion, packed with professional and amateur footballers, alongside lots of young footy fans. This was a thoughtful, well-researched programme, presented with tact and dignity by Mike Ingham. If you missed it, it will be broadcast again on Christmas Day. Keep your hankies close for a family’s visit to the grave of a footballer and soldier who died on the frontline in 1916.
Another resonant history is that of the Greenham Common protests (against US nuclear weapons being sited in Britain) in the early 80s. My Greenham was a series of short dramas based on the diaries of 50-year-old Ginette Leach. Though occasionally marred by some middle-clarse Radio 4 acting, the honesty and charm of the account kept breaking through, along with the amazing facts. In 1982, 30,000 women turned up to hold hands along the six miles of the perimeter fence of the Greenham base. They got in touch with each other by chain letter. That is still an incredible thing.
And Ginette’s was an incredible story. She moved from a marriage she summarised as “Me and John continue to rub along together. I’m still playing golf with Pru” to an affair with a fellow Greenham Common-er. She broke the law (by cutting the perimeter fence), applied to university, got arrested, sentenced and sent to Holloway. Talk about coming of age. A real-life, really lived adventure. Inspirational.
