Stand on a hilltop in the Peak District outside Macclesfield and look west, and you see the watermark of a culture whose flood-tide re-invented engineering, music, painting, writing and sport across the world, over a span of two centuries. You can see North-West autodidactism.

Wander around the North-West after time away and what jumps out is the architecture of the cotton and silk towns that initiated the Industrial Revolution. Terracotta that was visually resistant to the polluted air, Ruskinian Gothic straight out of the Stones of Venice, Corinthian columns supporting huge sandstone pediments, and above all many tonnes of red bricks.