Sitemap - 2023 - The Mill

Irrational optimism and the rebuilding of local journalism

The stories of 2023

After the credits rolled: What happened to the cast of 2023?

Black mould, freezing homes and a child in hospital: Meet the housing association that stole Christmas

🎄Can't face the Trafford Centre?

'I love you, I want to come home'

Secret hoards: The extraordinary discoveries of Manchester’s ‘misers’

Going underground: The Picc-Vicc Line and the future we never got

The Royal Exchange has pulled off the impossible and crafted a feel-good ‘Brief Encounter’. But does it miss the point?

After over a year in limbo, is the Clean Air Zone coming back?

How to crash a Chanel party

Surviving Manchester’s frozen streets

Why should posh kids have all the fun? On making music a universal, not a luxury

The government says it is ‘accelerating’ rail upgrades in the North. But is it?

Everyone hates the Arndale, but it's a microcosm of Manchester

What's it like inside THG, one of Manchester's biggest - and weirdest - companies?

Has Elon Musk chosen Greater Manchester for his new gigafactory?

Rowdiness returns to Manchester’s theatreland

Slems is known as the weirdest university halls in Manchester. That’s exactly how the students like it

Mill Investigation: How housing for the vulnerable became a ‘lucrative opportunity’ for property investors

The forgotten novel: Why we need to revive Manchester’s ‘Madame Bovary’

An early Christmas gift: levelling up funding rolls in

Where is Manchester supposed to put its students?

Take it back! How community action can save your local pool

'An ugly world with ramshackle houses and foul back alleys'

Has a ‘zombie newspaper’ just dropped through your letterbox? 

What does war in the Middle East do to a city like Manchester?

Inside Manchester’s secret network of women calling out their exes

What does the city owe to Miles Platting?

Boohoo’s Broken Promises: a journalist goes inside Manchester's fast fashion giant

The butcher of Moss Side

The crisis at the Old Courts deepens 

Is this the end of the old Irish Manchester?

Fancy partnering up?

Why does homelessness keep rising in Greater Manchester?

They wanted to revive one of the country’s oldest football clubs. But they had very different ideas

Chanel have been secretive about the location of their Manchester show. Thank god Mancunians love to gossip…

'I was literally manhandled': Another community divided over traffic and planters

Danny Boyle’s blockbuster Matrix dance show ‘Free Your Mind’ does exactly what it says on the tin

She came here to escape the Taliban. Now she's homeless on the Curry Mile

Are you 'from here'? And how long does it take to become a Mancunian?

Sheikh Jassim decides Manchester United isn't worth it

'What is associated with Deansgate Square is, well, pretty people'

Why has the Bee Network created an inequality that wasn't there before?

Surviving a traumatic journey across the sea and coming alive again in barber shops

A record-breaking year for sexual offences in Greater Manchester

A city that is good at writing press releases and bad at writing cheques

Will our trains always be a joke?

A community tries to adjust to its new neighbour — a homeless hostel

The unsung changemakers of Longsight

The Tories arrive in Manchester bearing bad news

The vanishing zoo of Rochdale

Exclusive: The Arts Council is investigating finances at Wigan’s Old Courts

The Royal Exchange’s ‘Great Expectations’ is accomplished and witty — so why was I checking my phone?

Burnham gets his buses

'Make it free again': what Manchester's returning students want from university this year

‘It is a shitshow’: Inside the dramatic, toxic fallout from Northern Fashion Week

Join the team reinventing British journalism

Why Greater Manchester will need 180,000 more graduates

The Tories are coming to Manchester - but is HS2?

The powerlessness of Michaela Ali

‘There’s a big piece of the jigsaw that seems missing’

Andy Burnham's defining moment: Does bus franchising add up?

Over a quarter of Greater Manchester is used for farming. Should we understand it better?

Who built the New Manchester? A book examines politics, homophobia and the Haçienda

Battening down the Hatches: We all love a food hall, but does the model actually work?

Manchester is an architectural capital now. But are we also destroying our heritage?

Schools start term with a new worry: structural collapse

Burnage Garden Village is at war - and the stakes couldn't be lower

Sara Rowbotham can't bear to hear about the Rochdale grooming scandal anymore

Some big news about The Mill

'I'm from Lancashire, not Greater Manchester': An old question of identity rears its head again

Inside the Peel empire: Is trouble brewing at the company that owns everything?

The abattoir at Newton Heath

Has Manchester Pride got its mojo back?

See you next week

Sink the pink: whistling down our most underrated tram line

Who's afraid of Soho House?

After a humiliating performance, Winnie Su gave up all hopes of becoming a pianist. Now she’s a rising star

‘Like a wound that isn't healing’ — an inquest into another possible mould death in Greater Manchester

'I never wanted to move from Ukraine. My friends wanted to, but I never did.'

Photographing the everyday in South Manchester

The tearful, surprising, ecstatic return of Bury FC

GMP helped to jail an innocent man. But the chief constable won't answer questions

Completing our 5k - and closing in on a record

The billion pound Manchester question: Who has benefited from the city's breakneck growth?

‘Frightening’ disorder or a ‘moral panic’? Assessing the threat from the city centre teens

‘Loving Father, Transphobic Traphephiliac’... hang on, what?

‘This is disgraceful’

The myth and meteorology of Manchester’s rain

‘Children seem a lot angrier’: The lingering legacy of the pandemic in our primary schools

'A massive, massive conflict of interest': Does Sacha Lord have too much power?

‘I hated you all along’: the ex-Manchester Grammar School teacher killed by one of his students

The sober guy at the rave: How Sacha Lord remade Manchester’s nightlife in his own image

Exclusive: Manchester's deputy leader accused of 'stirring up divisions' as school protests spread

Are parts of Manchester ‘overheating’? And what could Bolton and Wigan learn from Germany?

Try Greater Manchester's new 200-mile walking trail (well, bits of it)

The battle at Birchfields: Sex, relationships and ugliness at a Manchester primary school

'An echo chamber of negativity' - or a vibrant community? Welcome to Crusader Mill

An 'indecent and disgraceful' film that ended up in a Manchester courtroom

Is Manchester really the worst city in Europe for clean transport? We take a look

It's vast, it's beautiful — but does anyone know what Manchester's £210m venue is actually for?

'Eid is not just about praying in the mosques, but also about going out into the parks'

Pulling an all-nighter making Manchester's most sought-after bread

Are vandals and thieves sinking another cycle hire scheme in Manchester?

The social experiment: Our student life in the pandemic

A bridge, a barge and no one in charge

Why can't Manchester persuade developers to build affordable housing?

‘Families in utter shock’ as mortgage rates top 6%

A martyr and a mystery: The strange case of John Christian

Is Manchester going sober?

'Now a landlord is considered a pariah, a person who sucks the blood out of a tenant'

The city of trebles: Manchester rules over football once again

Are Greater Manchester's schools falling behind?

The Saudi developer and the burning pub: What happened at Hardy’s Well?

Secret bunkers, dodos and swarms of customers: why the toughest job on Market Street is security

Outside of Manchester’s thriving city centre, child poverty is on the rise

From Coronation Street to New York: Julie Hesmondhalgh's work asks, what if acting could change the world?

A morality play at the Theatre of Dreams: Manchester United fans can’t agree over their new owners

Come and work for The Mill

A prize-winning novel takes on ‘poverty and capitalist devastation’. And it's based in Rochdale

The secret flights: How Manchester Airport became a gateway for animal testing

A young woman made a harassment claim. Then the man she accused was elected mayor

Revolution in a cost of living crisis? Head to the Royal Exchange

Are almost one in five Mancunians unemployed?

Bad hospitality: Working in Manchester’s bars and restaurants - and not getting paid for it

Homeless teenage girls. You don't tend to see them - but this house in Whalley Range does

'Hell on earth': was anywhere more hated than the Manchester of 200 years ago?

Revealed: the best place in Manchester to be a tree

Are you free Thursday?

Does the Greater Manchester experiment work for Oldham?

‘Everything is tenser than it seems’: the culture war descends on Dunham Massey

Stranded at sea for six days, without water for two, Yun Ma feared the worst

Big Tory losses and another Oldham leader deposed: your essential local elections briefing

A scandal on polling day: Have Stockport Labour broken election law?

The only way is up

Millions of pounds a year, queues around the block and a customer base gone neurotic: what's in Manchester's secret sauce?

Locked up and livestreaming: Inside the thriving social media scene of Mancunian prisons

Last orders in paradise

The ship caught in a social media storm

First there were conspiracy theories, then there were social media mobs. What would it take for Labour to win Oldham?

A solution to rowdiness in theatreland: Stop selling bottles of Prosecco with the tickets!

Revealed: The scale of Greater Manchester's challenge in supporting asylum seekers

‘Pretend art, meaningless, obscene’: How a radical gallery shocked 1980s Rochdale

Is finding love in Manchester really this easy?

My return to Levenshulme - and the rise of Manchester's former townships

Spurned by Labour, a working class councillor tries to mount his comeback

Why was untreated sewage poured into the river at Crumpsall for 93 days last year?

‘A snapshot of 70s Britain’: Why does Manchester have so few black leaders?

The curtain falls at the Oldham Coliseum. This time it’s for good

How seriously is Greater Manchester taking its 2038 climate pledge?

The Guardian apologises for its 'awful history' after identifying historic links to slavery

The disappearing 'Manc' accent: How outsiders changed the way Mancunians speak

How 'historic' is Andy Burnham's new deal with the government?

A standoff over tree-felling in south Manchester

Competing for a prestigious role at the Hallé, the first challenge is to keep calm

Andy Burnham is about to get more powers - and face more scrutiny

In Manchester, St Patrick's Day is a marathon, not a sprint

Escaping Freight Island: Inside Manchester's latest hospitality meltdown

Manchester International Festival says: go big or go home

Undercover agents, sports cars and an Oldham flat: the fall of a people-smuggling kingpin

Tories beware: Graham Brady is quitting parliament - and preparing his memoirs

They want to live together in a co-housing community for over-50s. Can it work?

The Supreme Court has relocated to Manchester until Thursday. Why should you care?

‘They can’t hide behind being MI5’

The best club night you’ve ever been to on a Saturday afternoon

Five-figure brand deals, online hate and manifesting a marriage proposal: meet Manchester's influencers

Is it time to axe the car park? Addressing our city centre's green space problem

Could the Arena attack have been prevented?

Growing up in the countryside, he dreamt of Manchester’s music scene. How did the reality match up?

A public footpath by the Irwell re-routed through a hotel lobby? Not anymore

Who lives on Manchester’s waterways?

How Manchester’s crime gangs get asylum seekers to do their dirty work

Manchester Museum, fresh from a £15m revamp, has made itself unmissable

The students declared their university building an ‘autonomous zone’ - but not for long

Fast dates and slow agony at the casino speed dating night

Is Manchester’s hospitality sector in trouble?

A tragedy and a farce: What’s really going on at the Oldham Coliseum

A protest camp, claims of 'ecocide' and ancient trees protected by witches' spells. Welcome to Chorlton

Complaints

Can Keisha Thompson make weird work at Contact Theatre?

Can the council break Manchester's driving habit?

Who invented the Manchester Bee?

Tim Heatley is leaving the city centre and betting on — checks notes — Farnworth. Why?

The best reporting advice? Walk everywhere

He ran a popular Manchester United fanzine - then he started spreading Covid-19 conspiracies

The very reluctant rise of Paul Dennett

Hundreds of Manchester students are refusing to pay their rent this month. We met them

Why is your cash-strapped local council buying your failing local shopping centre?

'Significant new information' in Yousef Makki case

The BBC lured a star conductor to Manchester. So why didn’t it work out?

Guide for freelance contributors

The north Manchester home full of secret antique wonders

Chorlton, Didsbury and Hale are working from home: New Census insights into how we live

What happened in the Benjamin Mendy trial?

It's Europe's most successful new neighbourhood. So why is there so much tension?

£1,000 sofas, chic bistros and swooning Guardian features: welcome to the hipsterfication of Stockport

Mill Interview: Meet the government’s new social mobility tsar - a headteacher from Oldham

Is Greater Manchester’s controversial housing deal on the brink of collapse?

Writers! We need YOU

2023 is going to be our year

‘They sing chants about being vegetarians and eating hummus’