Today I met the historian Bill Williams

Well as you all know I was speaking to our history group today on British Home Children, and it went well. There were 28 people there and loads of questions at the end.

But what for me was the most exciting part of the afternoon was meeting the historian Bill Williams. I have heard him talk, read his books and even used some of his work for a GCSE assignment I produced in the mid ‘80s.
Even then I was careful to acknowledge my source which is I think the duty of any responsible historian. These days I also ask first and if permission is not forthcoming I don’t use it.

But I digress. I first met Bill on a guided tour of the Strangeways and Redbank area of Manchester. It was here that many Jewish families settled in the last quarter of the 19th century. They were fleeing from Czarist persecution and found a home in the narrow streets and small terraced houses of this part of the city. I then went on to read his book The Making of Manchester Jewry and recently Jewish Manchester: An Illustrated History.*

He was a founder member of the Jewish Museum which I joined i sometime in the 1980s.

All of which is an advance notice for his appearance at the history group in May talking on Black History.
Picture; cover of Jewish Manchester: An Illustrated History

* The Making of Manchester Jewry, Manchester University Press 1976, Jewish Manchester: An Illustrated History, DB Publishing, 2008