My Favorite City

Liverpool

Liverpool (/ˈlɪvərpuːl/) is a city in north west England. A borough from 1207 and a city from 1880, in 2014 the city council area had a population of 470,537 and the Liverpool/Birkenhead metropolitan area one of 2,241,000.

Liverpool sits on the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary, and historically lay within the ancient hundred of West Derby in the south west of the county of Lancashire. The expansion of the city in the Industrial Revolution paralleled its growth as a major port, and participation in the Atlantic slave trade. Liverpool was the port of registry of the ocean liner RMS Titanic, and many other Cunard and White Star ocean liners such as the RMS Lusitania, Queen Mary, and Olympic.

The city celebrated its 800th anniversary in 2007, and it held the European Capital of Culture title together with Stavanger, Norway, in 2008. Several areas of Liverpool city centre were granted World Heritage Site status by UNESCO in 2004. The Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City includes the Pier Head, Albert Dock, and William Brown Street. Tourism forms a significant part of the city's economy. Labelled the "World Capital City of Pop" by Guinness World Records, the popularity of The Beatles and other groups from the Merseybeat era and later contributes to Liverpool's status as a tourist destination. Liverpool is also the home of two Premier League football clubs, Liverpool and Everton, matches between the two being known as the Merseyside derby. The world-famous Grand National horse race takes place annually at Aintree Racecourse on the outskirts of the city.

Liverpool's status as a port city has contributed to its diverse population, which, historically, was drawn from a wide range of peoples, cultures, and religions, particularly those from Ireland and Wales. The city is also home to the oldest Black African community in the country and the oldest Chinese community in Europe. Natives of Liverpool are referred to as Liverpudlians (or less commonly Liverpolitans) and colloquially as "Scousers", a reference to "scouse", a form of stew. The word "Scouse" has also become synonymous with the Liverpool accent and dialect.

Culture

As with other large cities, Liverpool is an important cultural centre within the United Kingdom, incorporating music, performing arts, museums and art galleries, literature and nightlife amongst others. In 2008, the cultural heritage of the city was celebrated with the city holding the title of European Capital of Culture, during which time a wide range of cultural celebrations took place in the city, including Go Superlambananas! and La Princesse.

Music

Liverpool was the birthplace of The Beatles

Liverpool is internationally known for music and is recognised by Guinness World Records as the World Capital City of Pop. Musicians from the city have produced 56 number one singles, more than any other city in the world. Both the most successful male band and girl group in global music history have contained Liverpudlian members. Liverpool is most famous as the birthplace of The Beatles and during the 1960s was at the forefront of the Beat Music movement, which would eventually lead to the British Invasion. Many notable musicians of the time originated in the city including Billy J Kramer, Cilla Black, Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Searchers. The influence of musicians from Liverpool, coupled with other cultural exploits of the time, such as the Liverpool poets, prompted American poet Allen Ginsberg to proclaim that the city was "the centre of consciousness of the human universe".^[204] Other musicians from Liverpool include Billy Fury, A Flock of Seagulls, Echo and the Bunnymen, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Frankie Vaughan and more recently Anathema, Ladytron, The Zutons, Atomic Kitten, Heidi Range and Rebecca Ferguson. Elvis Costello, whose mother is from Liverpool, moved to Birkenhead aged 17 and formed his first band.

Philharmonic Hall, home of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic

The city is also home to the oldest surviving professional symphony orchestra in the UK, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, which is based in the Philharmonic Hall. The chief conductor of the orchestra is Vasily Petrenko. Sir Edward Elgar dedicated his famous Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 to the Liverpool Orchestral Society, and the piece had its first performance in the city in 1901. Among Liverpool's curiosities, the Austrian émigré Fritz Spiegl is notable. He not only became a world expert on the etymology of Scouse, but composed the music to Z-cars and the Radio 4 UK Theme.

The Mathew Street Festival is an annual street festival that is one of the most important musical events in Liverpool's calendar. It is Europe's largest free music event and takes place every August. Other well established festivals in the city include Africa Oyé and Brazilica which are the UK's largest free African and Brazilian music festivals respectively. The dance music festival Creamfields was established by the famous Liverpool-based Cream clubbing brand which started life as a weekly event at Nation nightclub. There are numerous music venues located across the city, however the Echo Arena is by far the largest. Opened in 2008 the 11,000-seat arena hosted the MTV Europe Music Awards the same year and since then has held host to world-renowned acts such as Andrea Bocelli, Beyoncé, Elton John, Kanye West, Kasabian, The Killers, Lady Gaga, Oasis, Pink, Rihanna, UB40.

Visual arts

William Brown Street, also known as the Cultural Quarter is a World Heritage Site consisting of the World Museum, Central Library, Picton Reading Room and Walker Art Gallery

Liverpool has more galleries and national museums than any other city in the United Kingdom apart from London. National Museums Liverpool is the only English national collection based wholly outside London. The Tate Liverpool gallery houses the modern art collection of the Tate in the North of England and was, until the opening of Tate Modern, the largest exhibition space dedicated to modern art in the United Kingdom. The FACT centre hosts touring multimedia exhibitions, while the Walker Art Gallery houses one of the most impressive permanent collections of Pre-Raphaelite art in the world. Sudley House contains another major collection of pre-20th-century art. Liverpool University's Victoria Building was re-opened as a public art gallery and museum to display the University's artwork and historical collections which include the largest display of art by Audubon outside the US. A number of artists have also come from the city, including painter George Stubbs who was born in Liverpool in 1724.

The Liverpool Biennial festival of arts runs from mid-September to late November and comprises three main sections; the International, The Independents and New Contemporaries although fringe events are timed to coincide. It was during the 2004 festival that Yoko Ono's work "My mother is beautiful" caused widespread public protest when photographs of a naked woman's pubic area were exhibited on the main shopping street.

Nelson Monument at Exchange Flags. The other British hero of the Napoleonic Wars is commemorated in Wellington's Column

Literature

Felicia Hemans (née Browne) was born in Dale Street, Liverpool, in 1793, although she later moved to Flintshire, in Wales. Felicia was born in Liverpool, a granddaughter of the Venetian consul in that city. Her father's business soon brought the family to Denbighshire in North Wales, where she spent her youth. They made their home near Abergele and St. Asaph (Flintshire), and it is clear that she came to regard herself as Welsh by adoption, later referring to Wales as "Land of my childhood, my home and my dead". Her first poems, dedicated to the Prince of Wales, were published in Liverpool in 1808, when she was only fourteen, arousing the interest of Percy Bysshe Shelley, who briefly corresponded with her. ^[217]

A number of notable authors have visited Liverpool, including Daniel Defoe, Washington Irving, Thomas De Quincey, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Hugh Walpole. Daniel Defoe, after visiting the city, described it, as "one of the wonders of Britain in his "'Tour through England and Wales.^[218] Herman Melville's novel Redburn deals with the first seagoing voyage of 19 years old Wellingborough Redburn between New York and Liverpool in 1839. Largely autobiographical, the middle sections of the book are set in Liverpool and describe the young merchantman's wanderings, and his reflections.^[217] Hawthorne was stationed in Liverpool as United States consul between 1853 and 1856.^[219] Charles Dickens visited the city on numerous occasions to give public readings.^[220] Hopkins served as priest at St Francis Xavier Church, Langdale St., Liverpool, between 1879 and 81.^[221] Although he is not known to have ever visited Liverpool, Jung famously had a vivid dream of the city which he analysed in one of his works.^[222]

Of all the poets who are connected with Liverpool, perhaps the greatest is Constantine P. Cavafy, a twentieth-century Greek cultural icon, although he was born in Alexandria. From a wealthy family, his father had business interests in Egypt, London and Liverpool. After his father's death, Cavafy's mother brought him in 1872 at the age of nine to Liverpool where he spent part of his childhood being educated. He lived first in Balmoral Road, then when the family firm crashed, he lived in poorer circumstances in Huskisson Street. After his father died in 1870, Cavafy and his family settled for a while in Liverpool. In 1876, his family faced financial problems due to the Long Depression of 1873, so, by 1877, they had to move back to Alexandria.^[217]

Her Benny, a novel telling the tragic story of Liverpool street urchins in the 1870s, written by Methodist preacher Silas K. Hocking, was a best-seller and the first book to sell a million copies in the author's lifetime.^[223] The prolific writer of adventure novels, Harold Edward Bindloss (1866–1945), was born in Liverpool.

The writer, docker and political activist George Garrett was born in Secombe, on the Wirral Peninsula in 1896 and was brought up in Liverpool's South end, around Park Road, the son of a fierce Liverpool–Irish Catholic mother and a staunch 'Orange' stevedore father. In the 1920s and 1930s his organisation within the Seamen's Vigilance Committees, unemployed demonstrations, and hunger marches from Liverpool became part of a wider cultural force. He spoke at reconciliation meetings in sectarian Liverpool, and helped found the Unity Theatre in the 1930s as part of the Popular Front against the rise of fascism, particularly its echoes in the Spanish Civil War. Garrett died in 1966.^[224]

The novelist and playwright James Hanley (1897–1985) was born in Kirkdale, Liverpool, in 1897 (not Dublin, nor 1901 as he generally implied) to a working-class family.^[225] Hanley grew up close to the docks and much of his early writing is about seamen. The Furys (1935) is first in a sequence of five loosely autobiographical novels about working-class life in Liverpool. James Hanley's brother, novelist Gerald Hanley (1916–92) was also born in Liverpool (not County Cork, Ireland, as he claimed).^[226] While he published a number of novels he also wrote radio plays for the BBC as well as some film scripts, most notably The Blue Max (1966).^[227] He was also one of several script writers for a life of Gandhi (1964).^[228] Novelist Beryl Bainbridge (1932–2010) was born in Liverpool and raised in nearby Formby. She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction, often set among the English working classes. Bainbridge won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996 and was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. The Times newspaper named Bainbridge among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".^[229]

J. G. Farrell was born in Liverpool in 1935 but left at the outbreak of war in 1939.^[230] A novelist of Irish descent, Farrell gained prominence for his historical fiction, most notably his Empire Trilogy (Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip), dealing with the political and human consequences of British colonial rule. However, his career ended when he drowned in Ireland in 1979 at the age of 44.

Helen Forrester was the pen name of June Bhatia (née Huband) (1919–2011),^[231][232] who was known for her books about her early childhood in Liverpool during the Great Depression, including Twopence to Cross the Mersey (1974), as well as several works of fiction. During the late 1960s the city became well known for the Liverpool poets, who include Roger McGough and the late Adrian Henri. An anthology of poems, The Mersey Sound, written by Henri, McGough and Brian Patten, has sold well since it was first being published in 1967.

Liverpool has produced several noted writers of horror fiction, often set on Merseyside – Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker and Peter Atkins among them. A collection of Liverpudlian horror fiction, Spook City was edited by a Liverpool expatriate, Angus Mackenzie, and introduced by Doug Bradley, also from Liverpool.^[233] Bradley is famed for portraying Barker's creation Pinhead in the Hellraiser series of films.

Performing arts

The Empire Theatre has the largest two tier auditorium in the UK

Liverpool also has a history of performing arts, reflected in several annual theatre festivals such as the Liverpool Shakespeare Festival which takes place inside Liverpool Cathedral and in the adjacent historic St James' Gardens every summer, The Everyword Festival of new theatre writing, the only one of its kind in the country,^[234] Physical Fest, an international festival of physical theatre, organised by Tmesis,^[235] the annual festivals run by John Moores University Drama department and LIPA, and by the number of theatres in the city. These include the Empire, Everyman, Liverpool Playhouse, Neptune, Royal Court and Unity theatres. The Everyman and Playhouse are now both part of one company, and both houses produce their own work as well as receiving touring productions.^[236][237] The Everyman was rebuilt between 2011 and 2014, with the previous building being demolished and a new venue constructed on the same site.^[238][239] Some notable actors from Liverpool include; Rex Harrison (Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady), Malcolm McDowell (Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange), Tom Baker (fourth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who) and Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films).

Nightlife

Liverpool has a thriving and varied nightlife, with the majority of the city's late night bars, pubs, nightclubs, live music venues and comedy clubs being located in a number of distinct districts. A 2011 TripAdvisor poll voted Liverpool as having the best nightlife of any UK city, ahead of Manchester, Leeds and even London.^[240] Concert Square, St. Peter's Square and the adjoining Seel, Duke and Hardman Streets are home to some of Liverpool's largest and most famed nightclubs including Alma de Cuba, Blue Angel, Bumper, Chibuku, Heebie Jeebies, Korova, The Krazyhouse, The Magnet, Nation (home of the Cream brand, and Medication, the UK's largest and longest running weekly student event), Popworld as well as countless other smaller establishments and chain bars. Another popular nightlife destination in the city centre is Mathew Street and the Gay Quarter, located close to the city's commercial district, this area is famed for The Cavern Club alongside numerous gay bars including Garlands and G-Bar. The Albert Dock and Lark Lane in Aigburth also contain an abundance of bars and late night venues.

Education

University of Liverpool's Victoria Building

See also: List of schools in Liverpool

In Liverpool primary and secondary education is available in various forms supported by the state including secular, Church of England, Jewish, and Roman Catholic. Islamic education is available at primary level, but there is no secondary provision. One of Liverpool's important early schools was The Liverpool Blue Coat School; founded in 1708 as a charitable school.

The Liverpool Blue Coat School is the top-performing school in the city with 100% 5 or more A*-C grades at GCSE resulting in the 30th best GCSE results in the country and an average point score per student of 1087.4 in A/AS levels.^[241] Other notable schools include Liverpool College founded in 1840 Merchant Taylors' School founded in 1620.^[242] Another of Liverpool's notable senior schools is St. Edward's College situated in the West Derby area of the city. Historic grammar schools, such as the Liverpool Institute High School and Liverpool Collegiate School, closed in the 1980s are still remembered as centres of academic excellence. Bellerive Catholic College is the city's top performing non-selective school, based upon GCSE results in 2007.

Liverpool John Moores University's James Parsons Building

Liverpool has three universities: the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University and Liverpool Hope University. Edge Hill University, originally founded as a teacher-training college in the Edge Hill district of Liverpool, is now located in Ormskirk in South-West Lancashire. Liverpool is also home to the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA).

The University of Liverpool, was established in 1881 as University College Liverpool. In 1884, became part of the federal Victoria University. Following a Royal Charter and Act of Parliament in 1903, it became an independent university, the University of Liverpool, with the right to confer its own degrees. It was the first university to offer degrees in biochemistry, architecture, civic design, veterinary science, oceanography and social science.

Liverpool Community College's Arts Centre

Liverpool Hope University, which was formed through the merger of three colleges, the earliest of which was founded in 1844, gained university status in 2005. It is the only ecumenical university in Europe.^[243] It is situated on both sides of Taggart Avenue in Childwall and has a second campus in the city centre (the Cornerstone).

The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, founded to address some of the problems created by trade, continues today as a post-graduate school affiliated with the University of Liverpool and hothaw an anti-venom repository.

Liverpool John Moores University was previously a polytechnic, and gained status in 1992. It is named in honour of Sir John Moores, one of the founders of the Littlewoods football pools and retail group, who was a major benefactor. The institution was previously owned and run by Liverpool City Council. It traces it lineage to the Liverpool Mechanics Institute, opened in 1823, making it by this measure England's third-oldest university.

The city has one further education colleges, Liverpool Community College in the city centre. Liverpool City Council operates Burton Manor, a residential adult education college in nearby Burton, on the Wirral Peninsula.

There are two Jewish schools in Liverpool, both belonging to the King David Foundation. King David School, Liverpool is the High School and the King David Primary School. There is also a King David Kindergarten, featured in the community centre of Harold House. These schools are all run by the King David Foundation located in Harold House in Childwall; conveniently next door to the Childwall Synagogue.

Sport

Football

The Merseyside Derby is the football match between the two biggest clubs in the city, Liverpool in red and Everton in blue.

The City of Liverpool is the most successful footballing city in England. Football is the most popular sport in the city, home to Everton F.C. and Liverpool F.C.. Between them, the clubs have won 27 English First Division titles, 12 FA Cup titles, 10 League Cup titles, 5 European Cup titles, 1 European Cup Winners' Cup title, 3 UEFA Cup titles, and 24 FA Charity Shields. The clubs both compete in the Premier League, of which they are founding members, and contest the Merseyside Derby, dubbed the 'friendly derby' despite there having been more sending-offs in this fixture than any other. However, unlike many other derbies, it is not rare for families in the city to contain supporters of both clubs.

Everton F.C. were founded in 1878 and play at Goodison Park and Liverpool F.C. were founded in 1892 and play at Anfield. Many high-profile players have played for the clubs, including Dixie Dean, Alan Ball, Gary Lineker, Neville Southall and Wayne Rooney for Everton F.C. and Kenny Dalglish, Alan Hansen, Kevin Keegan, Ian Rush and Steven Gerrard for Liverpool F.C.. Notable managers of the clubs include Harry Catterick and Howard Kendall of Everton, and Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley of Liverpool. Famous professional footballers from Liverpool include Peter Reid, Gary Ablett, Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher and Tony Hibbert. The City of Liverpool is the only one in England to have staged top division football every single season since the formation of the Football League in 1888, and both of the city's clubs play in high-capacity stadiums.

Source: Wikipedia