Asked what his favourite part of the city is, he continued: “For me the centre of Liverpool was always that amazing strip of Hope Street, in the middle of Liverpool’s bohemia.

“That’s everything – you don’t need to know anything more about architecture or its importance in cultural life than taking a walk down Hope Street.”

Both publisher and author admit Liverpool is not without its negatives. Mrs Reed said it is now crucial the regeneration spreads from the city centre to the suburbs.

And Mr Bayley added: “There are lots of bad parts. But the extraordinary thing about Liverpool is the extremities. The bad parts are very very bad, the good parts are overwhelmingly marvellous.”

The RIBA book is one in a series on the regeneration of Britain’s core cities. In it Mr Bayley sums up Liverpool’s journey: “Not long ago, mentioning the ‘future of Liverpool’ would have sounded ridiculous.

“People at the University School of Architecture were seriously advocating urban retrenchment, planned depopulation, reforesting and handing the many bits that did not work back to nature.

“However, times change; now there are loft dwellers, not shoeless waifs and beggarwomen. In my youth the big problem on a Saturday night out was getting nutted by an itinerant drunken yob... but now the big problem is where to park your Mercedes Benz.”