Tag: Terracotta Warriors

Meeting the Terracotta Warriors on an escorted tour of Liverpool

Just out: my story from Liverpool, where I joined a group tour last summer for Boundless magazine.

It offered a chance to get up close to some 2000-year-old warriors [pictured above] and a cruise through Merseyside’s industrial heritage.

Here’s a flavour of the feature:

Bill is facing down a ninja. The latter may have spent some 2,000 years underground, and it’s built of stone, but it still looks pretty handy with its fists.

“Each one of these statues has its own character, whether it’s a facial expression, or the stance,” says Bill, one of the organisers of the Liverpool trip. “They feel alive to me.”

The city has a rich heritage and cultural scene but the highlight for many is, of course, a chance to get up close and personal with the visiting Terracotta Warriors exhibition at the World Museum.

The underground army of life-sized warriors was first discovered in 1974 and this blockbuster exhibition has drawing the crowds all summer, featuring many objects never seen before in the UK.

Read more in the March-April issue.

 

Two terrific reasons for a half-term day out in Liverpool

I owe Gary Oldman a beer.

I’d tried pitching a story before about Western Approaches, the secret wartime bunker under an office block in Liverpool. It didn’t work out.

But with Darkest Hour cleaning up at cinemas and Mr Oldman tipped for an Oscar on March 4, Winston Churchill is writ large on screen once more.

Good timing then to try the story again with a new angle. After all, Winnie was a bit of regular at the nerve centre for the Battle of the Atlantic.

The timing was right for a feature timed for February half term. Here’s a preview:

Western Approaches HQ houses the original Gaumont Kalee Dragon projector [pictured above] Churchill used to watch secret war footage. Newsreel controlled by the Ministry of Information was then shown to the public in cinemas to boost morale.

I even managed to tie a Liverpool trip into the press preview of the new Terracotta Warriors exhibition at the World Museum.

Just don’t ask how many warriors made it across the Mersey.

Read the full story, Take the kids to Western Approaches, Liverpool.