Manchester Unspun: Pop, Property and Power in the Original Modern City: How a City Got High on Music

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As an important and urgent intervention in a field of increasing relevance within and beyond the academy, the book offers fresh perspectives on the colonial hangovers in postcolonial Britain from up-and-coming as well as established scholars.

Spinoza, a latter day Mancunian Pepys, has obviously relied upon a considerable amount of personal notes, contacts, memories and archive materials in putting this impressive account together but that’s what makes it such an engaging and essential read.It will be held up alongside such tomes as Engels "The Condition Of The Working Class in England", Haslam's "Manchester, England", Gaskell's "Mary Barton" and Burgess's "Little Wilson and Big God", in that it documents a precise era in Manchester's rich history. As boss of his own PR company, he promoted the dynamic post-industrial Manchester throughout the 2000s and 2010s. When the article came out each of the positive points made by the other contributors was juxtaposed with a negative repost from myself. BD did a special feature on Manchester in the early 2000s interviewing various architects and other professionals like myself. When United won the 1997 Premier League, half of the first team descended on Home after a riotous day at Chester races, where the red tops later reported they had brawled with other racegoers who first took the fight to them.

He then found himself occupying a front-row seat for the epic regeneration story that played out over the next four decades. A personal and sociological look at how its fortunes changed, featuring encounters with all the expected characters like Tony Wilson and even Alex Ferguson. Overall, Spinoza's memoir is very well written and he offers an antidote to the deficient journalism we have suffered over the popular music history of Manchester and its story as Britain's "second city". Manchester unspun sorts the truth from the spin of the city’s stories to reveal a remarkable journey, describing the hubris,scandal, money and politics which played out during its remarkable reinvention. In a forty-year career he has encountered a who's who of Manchester personalities, from cultural icons such as Tony Wilson to Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson and influential council leaders Sir Richard Leese and Sir Howard Bernstein.Of the two things that I could have been mentioned for; the Homes for Change Coop is only credited to Charlie Baker, and the Hulme Design Guide (which changed attitudes to design in the city and that I wrote with Charlie) is credited to Ian Simpson! Andy ended up writing for its diary page, detailing the goings on of the city’s nightlife, including a heady mix of footballers, council officials, musicians, Coronation Street actors, property developers and politicians. All blokes, and all part of a tight knit group that didn’t lack in confidence or brook dissent, but who changed the city forever. Bloxham moved swiftly when the opportunity came, with the entrepreneur’s killer feel for change in the air, despite all appearances: ‘When we bought the Smithfield Building the main tenant was bust,’ he said.

The book is an insider’s tale of deals done, government and corporate decision-making, nightclubs, music and entrepreneurs.

Spinoza weaves his way through football, fashion, food, politics and light-touch sociology, all to the backing track of Manchester's music scene, effortlessly showing us how a city's cultural development can be all-pervading and transformational.

A sympathetic property consultant tells him: “Gary very much values the views of his consultants – as long as they agree with his own. Part of the motive for writing Manchester Unspun appears to be sheer astonishment at the scale of the transformation. Andy will be in conversation with Stuart Maconie at Waterstone’s Deansgate on November 10, tickets available here. In one of many memorable encounters recounted in the book, he is summarily dismissed by that quintessential modern Manchester man Gary Neville after a disagreement over PR strategy for a proposed luxury hotel.Essential reading for any Mancunian, for anyone who is into Manchester music, or anyone who is interested in how modern cities are being transformed. First as observer, then as participant, Andy has enjoyed a ring-side seat in the renaissance and development of Britain's most exciting city. Manchester unspun sorts the truth from the spin of the city’s stories to reveal a remarkable journey, describing the hubris, scandal, money and politics which played out during its remarkable reinvention. Manchester Unspun is a remarkable record of the city’s emergence from industrial decline over the past fifty years. One night on the town he stumbled across one of his earliest developments, a former paper factory tucked into a side street near Oxford Road, which he turned into open-plan apartments in 1994.