Meet on the steps of the Midland Hotel. The ghosts of Anthony Burgess, Brendan Behan and Thomas De Quincey haunt the barstools and taprooms of many a Manchester tavern, in particular Thomas’s Chop House on Cross Street. This was where the cotton merchants trading at the Royal Exchange, most likely including that unmatchable social commentator Friedrich Engels, would tuck into a red hot chop at lunchtime in Victorian times. A century later it was a favourite drinking venue of Anthony Burgess who recalled in his memoirs “hard-headed magnates and cotton brokers gorging red meat in chophouses”. So come and drink in tales of opium eaters and clockwork oranges, and raise a glass to the forgers of fanciful fables.