Meetings 2024 - 2025
The society's monthly meetings are held on a Monday evening from September to April in Marple Methodist Church.
Doors open at 7:15pm ready for the meeting to commence at 7:45pm.
Follow this link for more general information about the society's meetings.
Nigel Linge brought us to half-time in the Society season with the story of that device in your pocket, handbag or just by your side. Comedian Ernie Wise was one half of the UK’s hugely popular comedy double act, Morecambe and Wise, and was famous for the “plays what he wrote!” However, on 1st January 1985 Ernie Wise made history by inaugurating the UK’s first mobile telephone network. This therefore was “the call what he made” that signalled the start of our mobile communications revolution which today has resulted in the situation where there are now more mobile phones than people in the country. Those early mobiles were huge, extremely heavy, very expensive, had limited battery life and could only make telephone calls. This talk tells the story of how that technology evolved over a relatively short period of time to deliver today’s smartphone that acts as our gateway to the web, ensures that we have a camera with us at all times, can pinpoint our physical location within a few metres on the planet’s surface and has transformed our lives and the very nature of how we communicate.
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Read more: December 2024: 'The call what he made' - Mobile Phones
Mark Llewellin
First broadcast on December 9th 1960, Coronation Street created by the 24 year old Tony Warren remains a nation’s favourite to this day.
Mark Llewellin, who gave a tour de force on the history of the Pantomime in It’s Behind You! December 2022, returned to take us back to the birth of this ground breaking show. A programme that in the 1960s and 1970s regularly attracted figures of between 18 and 21 million viewers.
Coronation Street was partly borne out of wish of Granada to produce more local drama, being contractually obliged to employ regional actors and production staff. Warren drew on memories of growing up in Swinton to Coronation Street, a working class community inhabited by “ordinary” people leading unspectacular lives.
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Joanna Williams
Manchester is famed for its support of radical political movements - the Co-operative movement, the Anti-Corn Law League and the Trades Union Congress. But perhaps the movement most closely associated with this city is the fight for women’s suffrage. In 2021 we heard from Andrew Simcock about Emmeline Pankhurst but at our October meeting Joanna Williams introduced us to a lesser known figure who played a very important role in the growth of the suffrage movement - Lydia Becker.
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Brian Groom
After giving us a talk in September 2023 on Northerners, Brian Groom came back for an encore. This time his subject was “Made in Manchester”, which was really something of a misnomer as it was a comprehensive history of Manchester, not just what was made here. Or perhaps I’m wrong. Yes, I am wrong. He was using the word ‘made’ in its widest sense. Not just what items were made in Manchester such as Ford motor cars and Kelloggs Cornflakes but the people who made Manchester and, in turn, were made by Manchester.
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13th January:
‘Pott Shrigley Abduction’ – Neil Mullineux.
17th February:
‘Railway Navvies’ - Kevin Harrison.
17th March:
'Deansgate - a history' – Keith Warrender.
14th April:
AGM followed by 'A Picture Tour of Marple in Days Gone By’ - Hilary Atkinson.
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