Liverpool

St George's Hall is on Lime Street in the centre of the English city of Liverpool, opposite Lime Street railway station. It is a building in... Neoclassical style which contains concert halls and law courts, and has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building. On the east side of the hall, between it and the railway station is St George's Plateau and on the west side are St John's Gardens. The hall is included in the William Brown Street conservation area. In 1969 the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner expressed his opinion that it is one of the finest neo-Grecian buildings in the world although the building is notable for its use of Roman sources as well as Greek ones. In 2004 the hall and its surrounding area were recognised as part of Liverpool's World Heritage Site. The site of the hall was formerly occupied by the first Liverpool Infirmary from 1749 to 1824. Triennial music festivals were held in the city but there was no suitable hall to accommodate them. Following a public meeting in 1836 a company was formed to raise subscriptions for a hall in Liverpool to be used for the festivals, and for meetings, dinners and concerts.
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Liverpool Cathedral is the Church of England cathedral of the Diocese of Liverpool, built on St James's Mount in Liverpool and is the seat of the... Bishop of Liverpool. Its official name is the Cathedral Church of Christ in Liverpool but it is dedicated to Christ and the Blessed Virgin. The total external length of the building, including the Lady Chapel, is 189 metres making it one of the longest cathedrals in the world; its internal length is 146 metres . The Anglican cathedral is one of two in the city. The other, the Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of Liverpool, is situated approximately half a mile to the north. The cathedrals are linked by Hope Street, which takes its name from William Hope, a local merchant whose house stood on the site now occupied by the Philharmonic Hall, and was named long before either cathedral was built. John Charles Ryle was installed as the first Bishop of Liverpool in 1880, but the new diocese had no cathedral, merely a "pro-cathedral", the parish church of St Peter's, Church Street.
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The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England, outside of London. It is part of... the National Museums Liverpool group, and is promoted as "the National Gallery of the North" because it is not a local or regional gallery but is part of the national museums and galleries administered directly from central government funds. The Walker Art Gallery's collection dates from 1819 when the Liverpool Royal Institution acquired 37 paintings from the collection of William Roscoe, who had to sell his collection following the failure of his banking business, though it was saved from being broken up by his friends and associates. In 1843, the Royal Institution’s collection was displayed in a purpose-built gallery next to the Institution’s main premises. In 1850 negotiations by an association of citizens to take over the Institution’s collection, for display in a proposed art gallery, library and museum, came to nothing.
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The Bluecoat is an arts centre in School Lane, Liverpool, Merseyside, England and claims to be the oldest arts centre in Great Britain. It is a... Grade I listed building and is meant to be the oldest surviving building in central Liverpool . It was originally built as a charity school in the early 18th century. The school moved to another site in 1906, and since then the building has been used as an arts centre. It was damaged in the Liverpool Blitz in 1941 and restored after the Second World War. During the 2000s the building was further restored and a new wing was added. It was reopened in March 2008 to celebrate Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture. It was built by Bryan Blundell, a sea captain, as a residential charity school, Liverpool Blue Coat School. Construction began in 1716 and the building, though still incomplete, soon opened as a school in 1718. By the following year it had 50 children, with room for 100 more, and construction was finally completed in 1725.
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The Beatles Story is a visitor attraction dedicated to the leading 1960s group The Beatles. It is based in Albert Dock, Liverpool, England. Located... within Liverpool’s historic Albert Dock and the Pier Head, the award winning Beatles Story is a unique themed visitor attraction which takes guests on an exciting and atmospheric journey into the life, times, culture and music of the Beatles. The attraction first opened in May 1990. Over the past couple of years the Beatles Story has expanded considerably and extended into a second site, based at the Mersey Ferries Terminal in the Pier Head. The famous visitor attraction now includes Going Solo areas, an interactive children's Discovery Zone, Beatles themed Starbucks Coffeehouse, Fab4Store, the amazing Fab4D experience which takes audiences on a magical journey through the music of the Beatles and must-see world class special exhibitions. Key highlights include: The Beatles Story main site is located in Britannia Vaults, Albert Dock in Liverpool, United Kingdom. A World Heritage site, the Albert Dock is the most popular free tourist attraction in the North West of England.
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The Oratory stands to the north of Liverpool Cathedral in Merseyside, England. It was originally the mortuary chapel to St James Cemetery, and houses... a collection of sculpture. It has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building. The Oratory was built in 1829, and used for funeral services before burials in the adjacent cemetery. It was designed by John Foster. When the cemetery closed, the building fell into disuse. In 1986 it came under the care of National Museums Liverpool, and is used to contain a collection of sculpture and statues. The building is in the form of a Greek Doric temple. At each end is a portico with six columns. There are no windows and the building is lit from above. Inside, a coffered ceiling is supported by Ionic columns. Pollard and Pevsner consider this to be Foster's best surviving building. On 28 June 1952 it was designated as a Grade I listed building. In the National Heritage List for England it is described as "one of the purest monuments of the Greek Revival in England". Around the Oratory are cast iron railings and gate piers that have been listed at Grade II.
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Cilla Black OBE is an English singer, actress, entertainer and media personality, who has been consistently popular as a light entertainment figure... since 1963. She is most famous for her singles "Anyone Who Had A Heart", "You're My World", and "Alfie". After a successful recording career and a brief time as a comedy actress, she became the highest-paid female presenter in British television history. In May 2010, new research published by BBC Radio 2 claimed that Cilla Black's version of Anyone Who Had a Heart was the UK's biggest selling single by a female artist in the 1960s.. In 2013, Cilla Black celebrates 50 years in show business, as a prelude to this landmark anniversary EMI release on 23 April 2012 Completely Cilla: 1963-1973 - a 5CD set containing 139 recordings and a bonus DVD of rare BBC TV music performances . Priscilla White was born in the Scotland Road area of Liverpool, England, during World War II, to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother..
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Michael "Micky" Quinn is a retired English professional footballer. He was predominantly a centre forward from 1979 until 1996. He had spells with... Wigan Athletic, Stockport County, Oldham Athletic, Portsmouth, Newcastle United, Coventry City, Plymouth Argyle, Watford and PAOK Thessaloniki during a career in which he scored 228 goals from 515 games in the Football League. Quinn was born in Everton, in inner city Liverpool, in 1962, the oldest of four children born to Michael Quinn and Patricia Silvano. From the age of five, he lived on the Cantril Farm estate. He was the grandson of Italian-born boxer Luigi Silvano who died in 1948. Quinn began his career as an apprentice with Derby County signing for the East Midlands club upon leaving school in 1978. However, he only lasted four months at the Baseball Ground, and returned to his Merseyside home due to homesickness. Eager though to turn professional, Quinn joined Wigan Athletic in September 1979.
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David Yip is an English actor. Yip, of Asian and English descent, was born in Liverpool and trained at East 15 Acting School, London. He is the son... of a Chinese father, a seaman from the Canton area of China, and an English mother from Liverpool. He is known for playing the lead role of Johnny Ho in the 1981 BBC drama The Chinese Detective, notable for its frontlining of an ethnic British cast. He also played Michael Choì in the soap opera Brookside between 1989 and 1990. He also had a small part in the 1979 Doctor Who story Destiny of the Daleks and played a factory owner in Casualty. His film credits include playing Wu Han in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and CIA liaison agent Chuck Lee in the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill. Both his characters died early in the films. He performed the radio play The Inventor of Fireworks, written by Benjamin Yeoh for BBC Radio 3 on 22 January 2004. David Yip is a practising Nichiren Buddhist and a member of the Soka Gakkai International. He currently lives in North Oxfordshire with his wife Virginia and his dog Buddy.
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Lesley Sharp is an English stage, film and television actress, particularly well known for her variety of British television roles including... Clocking Off, Bob & Rose and afterlife. Adopted as the second daughter of mature Scottish parents, Sharp grew up in Formby, Merseyside. Childhood holidays were spent in Edinburgh, where "every fucking summer it rained". Sharp started acting because, as a child, she felt "invisible" and didn't "quite fit in." She has said that her inspiration to act came from watching Dick Emery on television. Her father worked for the Inland Revenue and was not keen on her taking up acting, preferring her to follow in his footsteps by becoming a civil servant. Her adoptive mother died of cancer when Sharp was 15. The adoption was never a secret in the family, but it was only after leaving home that she met her genetic mother — a working class woman unable to keep her because the father was a married man. Sharp moved to London at 18 and, after initially failing to get into drama school, worked at the Department of Education and Science at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
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Alison Steadman OBE is an English actress. She established her career with roles such as Beverley in Abigail's Party and Candice Marie in Nuts in... May for the director Mike Leigh, to whom she was once married. In addition to her stage and radio work, she has had lead roles in The Singing Detective, Pride and Prejudice and Gavin and Stacey. In 1992 she won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress for her role as Mari in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice. Steadman was born in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, the youngest of three sisters, the daughter of Marjorie , who died of cancer, and George Percival Steadman, who worked for Plessey, an electronics firm, as a production controller. Steadman was educated at Childwall Valley High School for Girls, a state grammar school in the Liverpool suburb of Childwall, followed by East 15 Acting School, to which she secured a place in the autumn of 1966, where she first met Mike Leigh, during her second year.
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Mark McGann is an English actor, director and musician. McGann first appeared on stage in 1981 in the production Lennon at the Everyman Theatre and... the London Astoria where he portrayed John Lennon, role which won him the first of his two Olivier Award nominations for best actor in a West End show. He was later to reprise this role in two other productions, Imagine and the film John and Yoko: A Love Story for NBC television in the United States. His first television appearance was as 'Mad Dog' in Scully by Alan Bleasdale in 1983 with Cathy Tyson and Elvis Costello. A long career in TV followed seeing him play a wide variety of characters including 'Marcus Bannerman' in the World War I era drama series by Russell T. Davies The Grand in 1999; 'Joseph Bazalgette' the great Victorian industrial engineer in the award winning factual drama/doc Seven Great Industrial Wonders of the World in 2002; and 'Tom Crean' the Irish companion of Ernest Shackleton in Shackleton opposite Kenneth Branagh; and 'Niven Craig' in Peter Medak's Let Him Have It.
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Malcolm Frederick 'Mal' Evans was best known as the road manager, assistant, and a friend of The Beatles. In the early 1960s, Evans was employed as... a telephone engineer, and also worked part-time as a bouncer at the Cavern Club, where The Beatles performed. Manager Brian Epstein later hired Evans as their assistant road manager, in tandem with Neil Aspinall. Evans was tall and heavily-built, and Peter Brown later wrote of Evans as "a kindly, but menacing-looking young man". Evans contributed to many Beatle recordings, and appeared in some of the films they made. Although The Beatles stopped touring in 1966, Evans carried on assisting the band until their 1970 break-up. From 1969 forward, Evans had also found work as a record producer , and as an occasional songwriter. Evans was killed by police on 5 January 1976 at his home in Los Angeles. Officers were called when his girlfriend phoned the police and told them that Evans was confused and had a gun. The police believed that the air rifle Evans was holding was a rifle and shot him dead.
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Alfred "Alf" Lennon was the father of English musician John Lennon. He spent many years in an orphanage—with his sister, Edith—after his... father died. He was known as being very witty and musical throughout his life—he sang and played the banjo—but not as being very dependable. Although always known as Alf by his family, he later released a record as Freddie Lennon, and was quoted in newspapers under that name. He married Julia Stanley in 1938. John was their only child together, but as Alf was often away at sea during World War II, he did not see much of his child during his infancy. During this period, Julia became pregnant with another man's child. He offered to look after his wife, their child and the expected baby, but Julia rejected the idea. He had very little contact with his son until Beatlemania, when they met again, but later had only intermittent contact with each other. He died in Brighton, where he had gone to live after marrying 19-year-old Pauline Jones. James Lennon and Jane McConville , Alf's grandparents, moved with their respective families to Liverpool in the 1840s.
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Kelechukwu "Kele" Rowland Okereke is a British musician, best known as the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of the indie rock band Bloc Party.... Okereke was born in Liverpool to Roman-Catholic Igbo Nigerian parents. His mother was a midwife, and his father a molecular biologist. He grew up in London with his sister. As a child, he went to school at Ilford County High School , but switched to Trinity Catholic High School, Woodford Green for sixth form at age 16. He lived in Bethnal Green, and in 1998 he became friends with a student of nearby Bancroft's School, Russell Lissack, who would become Bloc Party's guitarist. A year later, while studying at King's College London, Okereke met Lissack again at Reading Festival, where the band was officially formed under the title of 'The Angel Range'. In 2001, Okereke moved out of his parents' home. He went on to meet Gordon Moakes and Matt Tong who became the band's permanent bass guitarist and drummer, respectively. In 2003, the band changed its name to Bloc Party after briefly being called Union. In 2005, Bloc Party released their first studio album, titled Silent Alarm.
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Thomas Stewart "Tom" Baker is a British actor. He is best known for playing the fourth incarnation of the Doctor in the science fiction television... series Doctor Who, a role he played from 1974 to 1981. In later years Baker played the roles of Professor Geoffrey Hoyt in Medics and Donald Ulysses MacDonald in Monarch of the Glen . He also narrated the sketch show Little Britain from 2003 to 2006. Baker was born in Scotland Road, Liverpool, Lancashire, the son of Mary Jane , a cleaner and John Stewart Baker, a sailor who was rarely at home. His parents were working class Liverpudlians. Baker left school at 15 to become a Roman Catholic monk and remained in the monastic life for six years, but left after losing his faith, and did his national service in the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving for two years from 1955 until 1957. At the same time he took up acting, at first as a hobby and finally turning professional towards the end of the 1960s.
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Elisabeth Clara Heath-Sladen was an English actress best known for her role as Sarah Jane Smith in the British television series Doctor Who. She was... a regular cast member from 1973 to 1976, alongside both Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, and reprised the role many times in subsequent decades, both on Doctor Who and its spin-offs, K-9 and Company and The Sarah Jane Adventures. Elisabeth Sladen born Elisabeth Clara Heath-Sladen was born 1 February 1946 in Liverpool, England. Sladen was the only child of Tom Sladen, who fought in World War I and served in the Home Guard during World War II, and Gladys . She developed an interest in performing at an early age, beginning dance lessons when she was five, and dancing in one production with the Royal Ballet. She was a primary school contemporary of future politician Edwina Currie, appearing in at least one school production with her. She went onto secondary school and attended Aigburth Vale High School for Girls. Sladen attended the Elliott-Clarke Drama School. In 1964, she made her first film appearance in Ferry Cross the Mersey as an uncredited extra.
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George Harrison, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred... to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian culture and mysticism, and introduced it to the other Beatles, as well as their Western audience. Following the band's break-up he was a successful solo artist, and later a founding member of the Traveling Wilburys. Harrison was also a session musician and a film and record producer. He is listed at number 11 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Although most of The Beatles' songs were written by Lennon and McCartney, Beatle albums generally included one or two of Harrison's own songs, from With The Beatles onwards. His later compositions with The Beatles include "Here Comes the Sun", "Something" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".
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