History of Central Library
Famous Names
This page features some of the famous people have been associated in some way with Manchester Central Library over the past fifty years or so. It includes: Sir John Barbirolli, Anthony Burgess, Ewan MacColl, Morrissey, Vikram Seth, Howard Spring, and Tony Warren.
Sir John Barbirolli (1899-1970)
One of Manchester's most famous adopted sons, Sir John Barbirolli made the opening speech on 16 September 1949, when the Henry Watson Music Library was relocated to the second floor of the building. During a lengthy speech, Barbirolli, who was a regular user of the music library, praised the then Music Librarian, John Russell and his helpful staff, and made clear how important he felt the library was to the musical life of the city.
He finished with some personal reminiscences about his visits to the library. Something of Barbirolli's character is perhaps revealed when he shows his lack of concern that the item he was looking for was on loan, saying:
Only last week, forgetting I possessed a copy of Verdi's Macbeth of my own, I tried for one and they were all out. A very healthy and encouraging sign.
He also described in detail some of the technical help he received:
Worried about a detail in the horn part in the slow movement of the Beethoven 4th Symphony, I happened to mention it to Mr. Russell one day, and I could immediately see from the small but shameless smile of triumph that illumines his features on these occasions that I was on to something. The Library contains the first edition of the full score and the band parts (published before the score) from which contemporary performances took place. Sure enough the tied note which had puzzled me and which is never shown in modern editions was there in contemporary editions.
[Sir John Barbirolli] [Anthony Burgess] [Ewan MacColl] [Morrissey][Vikram Seth][Howard Spring][Tony Warren][Top of page]
The famous novelist Anthony Burgess was born locally in Moss Side, and was a regular visitor to Central Library during his schooldays at Xavarian College. He often recounted the story of his seduction by the card catalogue in Central Library, and told it again in a volume of autobiography, Little Wilson and Big God (1987). His English teacher had sent him to the library to find out about a poet, James Elroy Flecker:
I went to the Central Library, at that time in Piccadilly, and had difficulty with the index system. It was all numbers, and I was looking for names. A woman of about forty put me right, a charming woman running acceptably to fat, dressed in a green skirt and a blue sweater; her hair prettily mousy, before getting down to her study of Engels. When I had gained enough information about Flecker (he married a Greek girl named Miss Skidaresse), she apparently had gained enough information about Engels, whoever he was. On the steps of the library she said I looked cold and asked if I would like tea. I thought she was proposing a Kardomah cafe, but she put myself and herself in a tram and took me to Ardwick, where she had a small flat above a confectioner's shop. It was a bookish flat, warmed by a gas fire, with bright rugs and pictures on the walls that were nothing like the anecdotal post-Millais horrors we had at home ... she told me that they were by great artists, only reproductions of course; I needed, she said, to be educated.
She meant more than instruction in the visual arts. She was a widow whose husband had drowned at Southport and was earning a living by lecturing for the Workers' Educational Association. Marx and Engels, whoever they were, were among the subjects of her lectures. But she was not disposed to talking about them after our strong tea and ginger snaps. She took from a drawer under her shelves of economic history a packet of condoms. I had heard of these but never yet seen them ... She now gave me detailed instructions about love-making on the rug before the gas fire.
Of the new Central Library and the Town Hall Annexe, Burgess said:
They are as elegant as anything in England.
[Sir John Barbirolli] [Anthony Burgess] [Ewan MacColl] [Morrissey][Vikram Seth][Howard Spring][Tony Warren][Top of page]
Salford-born Ewan MacColl, the world-renowned singer-songwriter and political activist, was a regular in the new Central Library when it opened in 1934. He describes some of the experiences he had here in his autobiography Journeyman (1990):
I had begun using the Manchester Reference Library in Piccadilly in the period following my stint at the Textile Trader. As a repository for the accumulated wisdom of the ages it was unimpressive, having the appearance of a large wooden chicken house.
The new Central Library which replaced the chicken house was an imposing circular structure with an enormous reading room, a small theatre and carrels where serious students could carry on their research without interruption. The portico of the magnificent edifice quickly became a popular rendezvous and "Meet you at the Ref" became a familiar phrase on the lips of students, lovers and unemployed youths. I was there on the opening day and on many days thereafter; the Ref played an important part in my life for I made many friends there.
MacColl goes on to describe some of the activities he and his friends got up to:
We shared the same table and drifted into the kind of companionable relationship whose boundaries are defined by small rituals. There was, for instance, the "register" or leave-taking ritual which consisted of inserting the details of your whereabouts in volume nineteen of the Parliamentary Rolls.
[Sir John Barbirolli] [Anthony Burgess] [Ewan MacColl] [Morrissey][Vikram Seth][Howard Spring][Tony Warren][Top of page]
Morrissey, former lead singer of The Smiths, once attempted to use the Language and Literature Library for an unofficial photo session. As he had not made any attempt to obtain permission beforehand he was asked to leave by the Librarian who did not know who he was. Morrissey had regularly used the department while swotting for his A Level examinations.
Incidentally, Morrissey's mother once worked for Trafford Libraries, and tourists have occasionally come into this building seeking to find her here.
[Sir John Barbirolli] [Anthony Burgess] [Ewan MacColl] [Morrissey][Vikram Seth][Howard Spring][Tony Warren][Top of page]
Vikram Seth, the internationally renowned writer, set part of his novel An Equal Music (1999) in the Manchester area, where its protagonist the violinist Michael grew up and attended college. In the course of his attempt to trace a musical score, Michael phones the Henry Watson Music Library, which he describes as:
my second home when I was a student in Manchester - and, even more crucially, for three years between school and college when I had to earn a fitful living there. I could not afford scores and music in those days. If this library had not existed, I don't know how I could have held onto my dream of becoming a musician. I owe it so much ...
Michael says:
as we speak, the curve of the walls comes to my mind, the light through the windows, the heavy mahogany shelving.
This older shelving has since been replaced with modern shelving, and the character of this becomes the topic of an entertaining conversation between Michael and the librarian who answers the phone.
Later in the novel, Michael travels to Venice where he visits the church where Vivaldi taught, the Pieta. He is inspired to play the largo from Vivaldi's first Manchester Sonata. He says:
nothing lovelier has ever been written for the instrument, and my violin clearly feels it has been written personally for it - for it to play here. Where else, after all, should this be performed? It was on this spot that Vivaldi tutored the young girls from the orphanage, and made them the best musicians in Europe. And since the piece was discovered in manuscript just a few years ago in the very library in Manchester from which I learned much of my musicianship, I feel it has been written for me as well.
[Sir John Barbirolli] [Anthony Burgess] [Ewan MacColl] [Morrissey][Vikram Seth][Howard Spring][Tony Warren][Top of page]
The Cardiff-born journalist and novelist Howard Spring began a long association with Manchester when he came to work for the Manchester Guardian. The city was used as the setting of his novel Shabby Tiger (1934). In it he describes a scene in which the new library is being built:
Anna strutted through the blue-and-white morning. Manchester wasn't so bad to-day. Clouds were bowling across the narrow sky-line over Mosley Street and St. Peter's Cross stood out white and fair. The steelwork of the new library was etched in intricate tracery against the blue, a vast web in which men were entangled here and there like flies fatally meshed. Through a gap in the boarding she looked down into the great hole out of which the building was rising, and whistled jauntily. It was grand to look at. Men wheeling barrows, men running up ladders, men clambering about the web, walking like tight-rope experts across precarious gulfs; cranes grunting and lifting and moving their tall fingers in wide arcs upon the sky; shrill whistles of command, brisk rattle of hammer on steel and slither of chains upon pulleys all grand to look at in the blue-and-white morning.
[Sir John Barbirolli] [Anthony Burgess] [Ewan MacColl] [Morrissey][Vikram Seth][Howard Spring][Tony Warren][Top of page]
Tony Warren, local author and creator of Coronation Street, is still a regular visitor to Central Library. In I Was Ena Sharples' Father (1969), the story of how Coronation Street came to the screen, he describes the importance of Central Library to his career:
To this day I can't revolve through the doors of the Manchester Central Library and hit that magic waft of rubber flooring and furniture polish without feeling a vicarious, truant, thrill. It's always as though I was still twelve and here was stolen time in a building full of plays and biographies of Theatre people and books about the Theatre. Best of all there was a real Theatre in the basement where talents the like of Joan Littlewood and Harry Latham - ten years later he was to produce the first episode of Coronation Street - were doing experimental seasons.
When they forgot to tell me I should be at school, they allowed me to prowl around in the shadows like an ever present and hopeful replacement for the back stage theatre cat. When they got round to shooing me away I simply went up to the vast circular, booklined main hall above and I read and I read.
[Sir John Barbirolli] [Anthony Burgess] [Ewan MacColl] [Morrissey][Vikram Seth][Howard Spring][Tony Warren][Top of page]
Contents of History of Central Library
- Introduction
- Before Central Library
- Vincent Harris
- Building the Central Library
- Features of the Building
- Famous Names (this page)
