by Malcolm Pheby | Apr 6, 2019 | Liverpool
There was tension in the air when the Atlantic Conveyor quietly slipped its moorings at Liverpool docks this week in 1982. Long-serving Captain Ian North, with his trademark bushy white beard, was at the helm as the Cunard container ship slowly navigated the River...
by Malcolm Pheby | Mar 30, 2019 | Liverpool, Movies
It comes as no surprise that Liverpool is the most filmed city in the UK after London. The city’s docks and distinctive architecture have been the setting for movies as varied as Letter to Brezhnev, gritty strike film Dockers and the romantic escapism of Shirley...
by Malcolm Pheby | Mar 24, 2019 | Liverpool
Opened by Queen Elizabeth in 1969, Radio City Tower has seen its fair share of highs and lows over the past half century. It became a Buck Rogers space-style restaurant in 1983 – and closed altogether for most of the 1990s. The tower was only rescued in 1999 when it...
by Malcolm Pheby | Mar 2, 2019 | History, Industry, Liverpool
More than 200,000 people gathered on a fine summer day by the Mersey in July 1934 to witness a major public event for Liverpool. It wasn’t the Reds or Everton bringing back the FA Cup a few months late – or a victory parade at the end of a conflict. The big occasion...
by Malcolm Pheby | Feb 23, 2019 | Liverpool, Music
Liverpool group The Escorts reckoned they’d have piled up a stack of hit records if Brian Epstein had been their manager. Somehow the 1960s band, formed by three friends from Morrison School for Boys in Allerton, never broke into the big time. The musical talent of...
by Malcolm Pheby | Feb 17, 2019 | 1960s, Liverpool
Tony Warren was always the first choice to write the screenplay for iconic Liverpool film Ferry Cross the Mersey. He was the king of kitchen-sink realism after creating Coronation Street in December 1960. Four years later, he’d started work on the movie that would...
