Manchester or Leeds

"Manchester has the same problems as Leeds — chavs, filth, pollution . . . litter, shopping centres, graffiti, scum, traffic, kebab, Jihad, beggars, posers, polishers . . . drugs, rape, street violence, vandalism, gangs, but it's also an old, large, strange city; it doesn't feel to have sprung up overnight like Leeds. There are enormous redbrick buildings bearing the plaques of old banks and insurance companies. It all seems very solid and enduring and English to you.

"Engels lived here, as did Marx and Admiral Dönitz (final head of state of the 3rd Reich); Wittgenstein as you later find lived about five minutes' walk from your house, a century ago."

~~ from the memoir 4.5 as included in Walter Aske's Vocations