ABSTRACT

Katherine Lady Chorley wrote the excellent book Manchester Made Them. Her narrative is on two levels. On the one hand it is the straightforward reminiscences of a girlhood in Edwardian Alderley Edge and as such it is full of interest from the social, historical and anthropological points of view. At another level it is a penetrating study of the men and women who were typical of Manchester early in this century. They ranged, in her gallery, from the first Sir William Mather to Olive Schill and Dorothy and Margaret Pilkington whom many of us can remember. In essence Katherine Chorley's book deals with the important men and women she knew and could recollect and who, in some subtle, different yet common way were moulded by Manchester. Manchester's day of glory began at the very end of the eighteenth century and reached their peak in the nineteenth century.