Liverpool Life Today’s Liverpool Echo, in celebrating the city’s 800th birthday, published a list of 800 people who have put Liverpool on the map. As you’d expect in a list that long, it doesn’t exclusively include people from the city and actually spreads the net a bit wider and includes the likes of Michael Heseltine who it argues had a major impact on the place.
That said, although the usual suspects are listed, it’s good to see the likes of Mitch Benn being acknowledged but in some ways it’s not quite as useful as it could be. Obviously I’m biased but at present an unsung hero like Ian Jackson of Art In Liverpool is doing as much as anyone for the culture of the city -- I’ve often attended events and heard people say that they wouldn’t have known about them had it not been for his blog.
Perhaps the most surprising discovery for me was that Liz Sladen who played Doctor Who’s Sarah Jane Smith was born in Liverpool, which means for a couple of years in the seventies, a couple of Liverpudians were flying around space and time (Tom Baker being the other). I’m not sure quite how I managed to miss that information but it highlights one of the things I love about being in a city with such a long and illustrious history -- there’s always something new to discover, however small.
Wow, thanks for the plug Stuart
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