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Anniversary Day Talks
Adelphi Hotel, 16th June 2026
2026 marks the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the Liverpool History Society. But it is also the anniversary of other important events in the history of the city.
It will be sixty years since the visit of Bob Dylan to the Adelphi Hotel during his controversial 1966 tour of the UK. In the afternoon before his appearance, Dylan found time to be photographed with kids playing out in Dublin Street. The street was empty because Everton were at that moment winning a heroic match in the FA cup final on the telly.
1966 wasn’t just about men in music and sport. There is a largely undocumented history of Liverpool women on the music scene in the mid-sixties, complete with seasons in Hamburg by the Band the Liverbirds. The mid-sixties was a period when Liverpool was never off the TV. From the rants of Alf “You Scouse Git!” Garnett to the social realism of Z Victor One on Z Cars, Liverpool was not short of small screen presence in 1966.
ARTICLES
Why Not Drown Liverpool? Welsh water for an English city
Liverpool Firsts
800 Years of History
Events
"OPERATION FISH", the secret wartime plan to move Britain's gold from London to Liverpool. Speaker Bernard Nevins
Reviews of Past Talks
The Social Survey of Merseyside 1929 – 1934
Robertson Gladstone: Demerara and Back 1828-1829
Key Events in Liverpool Newspaper History in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.
MEMORIES OF WAR
Remembering those from Dingle Liverpool, who served and died in World War I and World War II.
Dig For Victory - Sheila Binks (nee Robinson)
Grandma's War - Brenda Murray (nee McElroy)
NOTICE BOARD
In the footsteps of Peter Ellis
Two Liverpool History Society members walk in the footsteps of Liverpool’s elusive architectural genius, Peter Ellis.
Written by Graham Jones and the late Rob Ainsworth, designed by Matthew Duddington and published by the Liverpool History Society, this book traces the life of a local architect from his birth in 1805 on Shaw’s Brow to his death in 1884 at Falkner Square.
Story of the month
Every month we offer a tantalising glimpse of just a few of the riveting tales that await the reader in Journals published each year since 2002.
UNEARTHING LIVERPOOL’S SECRET WATERFRONT COMMUNITIES
May 2026 marks the 185th Anniversary of the death of ‘Joseph Blanco White’ Spanish writer and political exile buried in Liverpool
While often overlooked in official histories, Liverpool was once the home to thriving Luso-Hispanic communities from Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and the Philippines. These merchants and sailors who brought a Mediterranean and Latin American flair were central to the city’s maritime networks, with the Anglo Basque Larrinaga Line becoming a cornerstone of local trade from the 1860s onwards. Material traces of this heritage still exist in the city today, found in carved gateposts of Victorian villas and the names of boarding houses that once lined the central waterfront.
This article written by Kirsty Hooper details the outstanding research undertaken as part of the Hispanic Liverpool Project
Published in our 2016 Journal (No.15)
