This chapter describes some of what we know so far about a possible Multicultural British English (MBE) by first explaining where it fits in terms of Multicultural London English (MLE) and how it has been labelled up to now. It draws upon research which has investigated varieties of English that appear to contain features of MLE, yet which are used outside of London. In doing so, it explores how local and supralocal linguistic features might work alongside features of MLE to create regional versions of an underlying variety of English, MBE, that exists in various locations across the UK. The chapter describes a few of the phonological, lexical and syntactic features of a Manchester-oriented MBE, before providing insights into the extent to which some of its speakers are aware of the language they use. Finally, the chapter discusses the role of grime music in the development and possible diffusion of MBE, and calls for further research to be carried out.

Cities are contact zones characterised by conviviality of cultures. They have been described as the ideal setting for multilingual utopias, where institutional spaces emerge that cultivate multilingualism. In the context of globalisation and super-diversity, cities can redefine themselves as post-national spaces. Neoliberalism embraces diversity for its profitablity value; it is opposed by notions of the right to the city and local citizenship. Critical social and sociolinguistic theory embraces definitions of identity, community and language that recognise the dynamics of multiple components in individuals' repertoires of features and networks of practice. Traditional notions of identity, belonging, commuity and language give way to an appreciation of the fluidity of forms of belonging and networking practice. Diasporas are understood as translocal networks of practice with multiple expressions of belonging. Manchester as an early industrial city offers an interesting setting to observe the evolution of diaspora communities and their alignment with fluid language practices.

In the era of the colleges’ foundation around 1880, ‘applied science’ dominated the space between science and practice in British education. However, ‘technology’ was an increasingly popular competitor. These two categories of knowledge were associated with different institutions and classes of students, and between the 1870s and World War Two, educators treated the two as complementary. So, this chapter asks how ‘technology’ was used in this period and how it related to ‘applied science’. ‘Technology’ was popularised by the technical education examined first by the Society of Arts and then by the City and Guilds. While carefully differentiated from workplace apprenticeship, it was much more practical than applied science. Government concern not to interfere with the free market and industrial anxieties about proprietary knowledge defended the divide. In the early twentieth century, emulating American and German models, ‘higher technological education’ taught at its own elite centres, particularly at Imperial College, in Manchester, and in Glasgow, came to be differentiated from technical education.

Chapter 7 delves into the reformers often-futile attempts to solicit potential non-official allies such as the Lancashire textile manufacturers and Anglo-Indian planters who sought access to raw cotton and land freeholds. While it initially seemed that the mobilization of the mill owners might deter arbitrary colonial governance, they failed to back the reformers’ radical efforts to alter India’s bureaucratic apparatus after the Uprising of 1857. Disappointed on a second front, reformers were also compelled to condemn the European planters whose exploitative tactics resulted in agrarian disturbances. As Manchester cotton lords in the 1870s continued to harp on the inequity of the colonial import duties levied on their textiles, reformers accused them of weaponizing free trade and stifling Indian competition. Recurrent famines also brought the efficacy of laissez-faire governance into question, which in turn led a faction within the East India Association to espouse a racialized variant of conservationism.

This chapter is the first of three to consider Puccini’s travels, both for work and leisure. It covers his travels in western Europe, particularly in France and Great Britain, assessing the importance of Paris and London as key centres for the performance of Puccini’s works. Both cities had had long and vibrant traditions of importing musical works from other European countries; Paris also had a flourishing operatic culture of its own. Puccini visited both cities regularly from the mid-1890s, often to supervise the production of his works. London became particularly important for Puccini when Manon Lescaut was launched at Covent Garden in 1894; a few years later he would visit Manchester for the British premiere of La bohème. Visiting Paris for business allowed Puccini the opportunity to hear new works by other leading European composers of the day, including Debussy and Stravinsky. It was also a place of refuge for him at a time of personal crisis. The chapter records Puccini’s thoughts about these and other European cities, not all of which were flattering. It concludes with a discussion of his death in Brussels in 1924.

Sebald’s literary life began in Manchester. The short period he spent there (1966-70) left a lasting imprint on his writing, which this essay will explore through the three texts most directly inspired by the city: his 1967 poem ‘Bleston: A Mancunian Cantical’, the long prose poem Nach der Natur, and the fourth section of The Emigrants (‘Max Ferber’). These works reveal the aspects of Manchester most significant to Sebald: his encounters with an ‘industrial wasteland’, the Mancunian Jewish community, and Michel Butor’s 1956 novel, set in a fictionalized version of Manchester, L’Emploi du temps.

This chapter examines the politics and the practice of partnership in the urban renewal era. This public-private dynamic was the central political relationship which drove urban transformation; it was codified and mandated explicitly within planning legislation and central policy diktats and pursued energetically by many individual local authorities eager to remake the image and economy of their towns. I show how this hybrid, mixed economy of planning was situated within the wider political economy of post-war Britain, tracking the political influence and connections of the property and construction sectors as well as the attitudes and policy positions of both the Conservative and Labour Parties. I also trace the operation and impact of partnership-based urban renewal on the ground in various cities, focusing in particular on Manchester, Liverpool and Nottingham. Local authorities had a range of motivations for working with the commercial development sector and their experiences were not uniform. The chapter shows that some cities managed to navigate the new terrain of public-private developmentalism more successfully than others, but I also stress the basic asymmetries involved in these relationships, particularly for those places that were struggling most economically.

Focusing on the figure of William Gaskell, husband of Elizabeth, dissenting minister, reformist, and poet, this chapter discusses how the literature of ‘social problems’ interacted with the emerging field of sanitary science. The city of Manchester and the working-class family periodical are examples of ferments where ideas on what constitutes knowledge of questions relating to poverty and poor sanitation are channelled through an intricate relationship shared by medicine, reportage, and fiction. The poems of William Gaskell are read alongside the sanitary work of Thomas Southwood Smith. Both men contributed to the radical Howitt’s Magazine and both sought to reframe the social project in such a way that an analysis of the very means of knowing could underpin the representation of urban health problems. This was an epistemological strategy, and insight, that came about through the intersections of medicine and literature – through their shared spaces, vocabularies, and means of representation.

Nicknamed Cottonopolis, Manchester was the city most closely associated with the Industrial Revolution, as it became first the manufacturing center of cotton cloth in England and then the marketing center for its surrounding hinterland villages. Local history, from canal infrastructure and legal provisions to the technical choices its people made, shaped the technological paths and outcomes of industrialization. Extending the Industrial Revolution story beyond individual machines to “Cottonopolis” also supplies links between the industrial prowess of Manchester and the slave factories in Africa and plantations of North America, as well as to the cotton industry of India, to demonstrate the reverberations between technological change and its widening contexts. Cottonopolis describes Manchester in the Industrial Revolution, and links local history to global processes.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, playwright and theatre owner, was elected an MP for Stafford in 1780, promising to represent his constituents. In making this pledge, Sheridan was claiming the persona of an English parliamentarian. Yet Sheridan probably considered himself as at least partly Irish and knew that he was working within the contradictions and of the Irish diaspora. This chapter re-examines Sheridan’s comedies, suggesting ways in which the mutability of personality central to The School for Scandal can be read in terms of Sheridan’s own multiple loyalties. Identity is never merely a matter of playful slippage. Cultural and political realities demand singular commitments. A test came for Sheridan in 1785 when William Pitt presented his Irish propositions, seeking to regulate trade with Ireland. The proposals prompted protest in the English regions, notably the manufacturing districts, including Staffordshire. To appease his opponents Pitt altered his scheme in ways injurious to Ireland. The evolution of this debate placed unique pressure on the Irish-born member for Stafford. By examining Sheridan’s leading role in these debates, it is possible to come to a new understanding, not only of Sheridan’s predicament but also of how The School for Scandal evolved in a period of crisis.

One of the works of the 1764 season at Covent Garden was a new burletta called Midas. Midas was, though, not ‘new’; it was only new to London: an early version of the work had its first staging privately in 1760 in Lurgan near Belfast, and the first professional version was at Dublin’s Crow Street Theatre in 1762. The professional version was prepared in response to the appearance in Dublin of an Italian burletta company, a company that had previously performed in London and would do so again after its Dublin engagement. This interplay of repertory between the two cities - of which Midas was the most obvious product - resulted both in a new genre and a tangling with Italian opera troupes. Midas was the product of a group of Irishmen, of whom Kane O’Hara, the librettist, was the most important and the most enigmatic; this chapter explores his role in the cross-currents of drama between the two cities. In so doing, Burden’s chapter re-contextualises the history of the burletta and offers a powerful demonstration that theatre historians cannot and should not write about London’s theatre in isolation: regional influences were important tributaries to the Georgian capital’s culture.