A guiding light in this city’s history

Sep 6 2007 by Paul Corcoran, Liverpool Daily Post

FROM one birthday party (ie, mine) to another and seeing as it was the big 800 – it gave my friends and I one hell of a reason to celebrate. Happy birthday, Liverpool.

Following one of the best firework displays I have ever witnessed, where I, along with a group of my friends, scurried down to the docks (wine and all) to catch three of our iconic buildings ablaze with colour and light.Later in the week, I joined my friend Ken for a tour of our city like no other.

As a Liverpudlian born and bred, I do like to pride myself on my knowledge of our city, where it has been and what is happening in it right now. However, compared to Ken, I know nothing. In the end, I had to abandon trying to show off what knowledge I had, opting instead to keep quiet and simply concentrate on memorising his every word – to regurgitate later, of course, to less knowledgeable acquaintances.

If a crown was to be given to a person who knows Liverpool better than his back hand, which at one point I found myself checking out to see if he had etched notes upon it, it would have to go to Ken Pye. After all, he is the author of Discover Liverpool, one of the most popular and best-selling Liverpool-focused books of all time.

The book, which has been completely written by Ken, gives the reader a detailed description of the city and its history as well as pointing out the most interesting places to visit. And, seeing as I am The Urbanite and am supposed to know many of these facts, I felt it would be a useful addition to my bedtime reading list. To my delight, I was pleased to also find a DVD enclosed within Discover Liverpool on which Ken highlights eight of his favourite tours and which I could enjoy from the comfort of my own couch.

How wonderful technology is when you can take a tour of a city and learn so much without having to recharge the camera batteries or hunt for an umbrella to avoid a drenching. Precisely my kind of tour.

Our real-life tour took a more action-orientated approach, although this came to a pause when we stopped for lunch in the Athenaeum Club, nestled between Church Street and Blue Coat Chambers, on Church Alley. If ever you were looking to discover a little bit of Liverpool’s history, this is the place to go. If you are one of its members, that is.

The club has been around for more than 200 years and was founded to provide a meeting place where ideas and information could be exchanged in pleasant surroundings. What an apt location, then, for a transfer of knowledge from one wise Liverpudlian to one considerably less so.

The building oozes history, stories and charisma and is uncharacteristically welcoming and charming, from the security guard on the way in to the delightful lady who served us high tea. I tried in vain to avoid feeling marvellous in such a grand lunchtime location, even if my trendy skinny tie was choking me throughout and preventing me from swallowing much of my lunch.

And so, once more, happy birthday, Liverpool. I am pleased to say I have already learnt a great deal thanks to my very own signed copy of Discover Liverpool. Although I don’t expect I will be writing my own tour guide anytime soon – you can only imagine where you would end up.