The book’s epilogue argues that Soft Cell’s story could have turned out differently in a number of ways. They might have arrived at a point where culture was less hostile to queerness, or where synth pop was more easily understood by the public. Or, they might have benefitted from more sensible management and a more harmonious relationship with their record label. And yet, it points out that Soft Cell’s defining qualities were restlessness and curiosity and that ultimately it was their pursuit of these aspects despite any obstacle that made their music so engaging.
Gilbert Gadoffre’s life encompassed a wartime role as Resistance hero and his postwar reinvention as a champion of civilised transnational intellectual exchange at the Institut Collégial Européen, which he founded in 1947. But his most enduring institutional connection, building on a youthful anglophilia, was with the University of Manchester, as lecturer (1938–40), senior lecturer (1954–63) and professor (1966–78). The contribution will focus on his ideas about the dissemination of culture in diverse institutional contexts – the French Resistance, the Institut Collégial, and Manchester – and consider the validity of his conviction that the humanism articulated in France during the reign of François I (1494–1547) should be the model for a modern, universal humanism.
Henry Enfield Roscoe was Professor of Chemistry at Owens College between 1857 and 1886, a period of nearly thirty years and a crucial one in the annals of the college. He not only built up the almost moribund Chemistry Department into one of the most important in the country, but he also played a crucial role in the move of the college to Oxford Road and the creation of Victoria University. He was also instrumental in bringing medicine into Owens College. Initially educated at UCL, Roscoe went to Heidelberg to study under the leading chemist Robert Bunsen and became one of his closest collaborators. Thereafter he became an advocate for the German model of higher education. Manchester at this time had a notable German community, the largest group of foreigners in the city, and they made a major contribution to the development of the British chemical industry and the German synthetic dye industry, as well as to Marxism. Roscoe brought German chemists to Owens (notably Carl Schorlemmer, a close comrade of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the SPD and the First International) and sent Owens students to be educated in Germany. This chapter explores the links between Roscoe, Owens College, Manchester and Germany and their impact on the development of the University of Manchester.
The chapter recounts Soft Cell’s time recording their debut album in New York, and how multiple different aspects of the city’s vibrant club culture were to have a huge effect on their output going forwards, including gay clubs, disco, early hip-hop and new wave. It argues that when they arrived there, the city was entering a key transitional point, where the desolation of the 1970s was giving way to the cultural explosion of the 1980s, and before it was to be decimated by both the AIDS pandemic and a wave of gentrification and sterilisation. It explores the impact of then-legal drug ecstasy and its associated culture on their work, as well as that of pivotal figures they met in New York such as Anita Sarko and Cindy Ecstasy. It draws direct lines between all of the culture the band were absorbing, and the music they were producing in the studio, not only on their debut album, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, but also a follow-up remix album, Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing, and argues that the latter was to be a pioneering release in the world of dance music.
Esther Roper, a suffragist and one of the early cohorts of women graduates from Owens College, helped to set up the Manchester University Settlement in Ancoats, and a year later was joined in her work there by Eva Gore-Booth, the sister of the future Countess Markiewicz. This chapter examines the nature of their work together, how it developed in line with their work on suffrage, including their campaign against Winston Churchill's re-election in 1908, and how their work provides a new context for how we read Gore-Booth's recently republished poems, especially in her three 'Manchester' books, Unseen Kings (1904), The Egyptian Pillar (1907) and The Agate Lamp (1912).
The introduction gives an overview of the way in which Soft Cell have been unfairly dismissed as one-hit wonders due to the massive popularity of ‘Tainted Love’, and how their chart success has overshadowed a career that was far more radical than is often given credit for. It argues that Soft Cell were subject to two rival pulls: the pursuit of mainstream success and their desire for uncompromising creative expression, and that ultimately it was the clashes between the two that led to both the band’s early demise and the high quality of the music they produced during this time.
The Introduction discusses the relationship of the book to the University of Manchester’s bicentenary. It explains the relationship of the two institutions founded in 1824 – the Mechanics’ Institution and the Pine Street School of Medicine – to the wider civic culture as well as to the subsequent development of higher education in nineteenth-century Manchester. It sets out the book’s rationale: providing a new kind of university history focusing on how ideas are generated in a particular place.
James Bryce was one of the foremost academic intellectuals of his time, and a notable polymath, eminent as historian, jurist, Americanist, humanitarian, mountaineer, cabinet minister, diplomat and much else. His Manchester connections are forgotten. Yet his connections with Owens College were deep (he drafted its first constitution in 1869) and enduring (he was for many years a governor, and fifty years later he opened the Arts Building). This chapter uses Bryce’s career at Owens (lecturer 1867–70; Professor of Jurisprudence 1870–75) to uncover the significance of the new kind of institution Owens became in the wake of the ‘extension’ of the college in 1870: one with a ‘public’ form of governance which tied it much more firmly to its civic mission. It explores the connections between the reconstitution of the college and heated political contests in Manchester and beyond over the control of educational endowments, and nationally over the abolition of religious tests.
The chapter explores the way that in Britain the idea of the ‘seaside’ is different to that of the ‘coast’, in that it is essentially an artificial creation. It charts the history of this idea, from the first resort set up around mineral springs in Scarborough, through the masses of Victorian factory workers who descended on the coast during scheduled Wakes Weeks, and the towns’ ultimate decline as newfound prosperity after the Second World War saw richer people begin to holiday abroad. It tells the story of how Marc Almond and Dave Ball spent their childhoods in such towns – Southport and Blackpool, respectively – and how their culture created a lasting impression on them that would persist throughout their work, whether clowns and circus performers, pantomimes, the desolation of seaside attractions during the off-season or intense Northern Soul parties in the case of Blackpool. It also acknowledges wider pop culture influences on the young men, such as David Bowie’s appearance on Top of the Pops as Ziggy Stardust, and Ball’s hearing of Kraftwerk’s ‘Autobahn’.
The University has a long tradition of outreach to the public in Manchester and beyond, but in the early years of the twenty-first century the impact of this work – in particular that of physics and astronomy – became global, with consequences for both the University’s reputation and student recruitment. The spark was the appearance of particle physicist and one-time pop star Professor Brian Cox on a series of BBC science programmes – first as a presenter of Horizon programmes (2005–09), then as presenter of high impact series: Wonders of the Solar System (2010), Wonders of the Universe (2011), Wonders of Life (2013). These series captured the popular imagination and were quickly recognised as being partly responsible for a major increase in student recruitment to undergraduate degrees in physics, in Manchester and beyond. The Jodrell Bank observatory also became the focus of outreach relating to astronomy, through TV programmes (Stargazing Live – 2011–19), the inscription of the Lovell Telescope as a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the annual award-winning bluedot festival of music, science and culture (2016 onwards). Using interviews with the key participants, this chapter will explore how the ‘Cox Effect’ took off, its impact on recruitment to physics and astronomy in Manchester and beyond, and the way that Jodrell Bank in particular has re-emerged as a key emblem of the University.