List of people from Manchester

This is a list of people from Manchester, a city in North West England. The demonym of Manchester is Mancunian. This list is arranged alphabetically by surname. For people from Greater Manchester see List of people from Greater Manchester.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

A–F

• Daniel Adamson (1820–1890) – engineer born in Durham who designed the Manchester Ship Canal; one of the directors of the Manchester chamber of commerce; Justice of the Peace for Cheshire and Manchester; buried in Withington
• Chris Addison – stand-up comedian, writer and actor
• Mark Addy (1840–1890) – Manchester-born Albert Medal recipient
• Caroline Aherne – BAFTA Award-winning actress, comedian and writer, The Mrs Merton Show
• William Harrison Ainsworth – historical novelist born in Manchester
• Sir John Alcock – aviator who, with fellow British aviator Arthur Brown, made the first nonstop transatlantic flight
• Adam Anderson  – synthesist, one half of synth-pop duo Hurts
• Don Arden – Cheetham Hill-born music manager and businessman, Owns a sick ore tree overseeing the careers of rock groups Small Faces, Electric Light Orchestra and Black Sabbath
• Rob Atha – table football player
• Mike Atherton – former England cricket captain and commentator
• Max Beesley – English actor and musician
• Stan Bowles – born and brought up in Collyhurst; Manchester City, QPR, Nottingham Forest and England International footballer in the 1970s
• Ian Brown – lead singer of the Stone Roses
• Joe Brown – born in Ardwick, climber and mountaineer
• Wes Brown – former Manchester United footballer
• Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) – Manchester-born and educated author, poet, playwright, musician, linguist, translator and critic, known for novel A Clockwork Orange
• Darren Campbell – former sprinter representing Great Britain
• John Cassidy – Irish-born sculptor and painter who lived in Manchester
• Sir Humphrey Chetham – merchant and benefactor of Chetham's Library; born in Crumpsall
• Stanley Chow  – artist and illustrator
• Richard Cobden (1804–1865) – Sussex-born industrialist who moved to Manchester where he was politically active
• Roy Collins (1934–2009) – cricketer who played for Lancashire and Cheshire; born in Clayton
• Lisa Cross (born 1978) – IFBB professional bodybuilder
• Peter Cundall, OA – horticulturist and television presenter; born in Manchester
• Ian Curtis – musician and singer in Joy Division
• Mark Davies – Bishop of Shrewsbury
• Les Dawson – comedian born in Collyhurst
• Arthur Delaney – painter influenced by L. S. Lowry
• Lee Dixon – former professional footballer and ITV Sport football pundit
• DJ Semtex – disc jockey and presenter for BBC Radio 1Xtra digital radio station, presenting the flagship hip-hop show Friday Nights
• Robert Donat – film and stage actor; known for his roles in Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor
• Judy Finnigan – television presenter and columnist; usually co-presents with her husband, Richard Madeley; they are collectively known as Richard and Judy

G–M

• Liam Gallagher – lead singer of Manchester band Oasis; born in Burnage
• Noel Gallagher – songwriter and lead guitarist for High Flying Birds and formerly Oasis; born in Burnage
• George Garrett – submarine pioneer who built Resurgam; brought up in Moss Side
• Max George – member of boy band the Wanted
• Jimi Goodwin – bassist, vocalist and guitarist for the Doves
• Holliday Grainger – Didsbury-born actress; known for portraying Lucrezia Borgia in Showtime's The Borgias
• Trevor Griffiths – dramatist, co-writer of screenplay for the film Reds; born in Ancoats
• Nick Grimshaw – Manchester-born Radio 1 DJ
• Andrew Hall – Cheshire cricketer
• Stuart Hall – BBC radio and television presenter
• Arthur Harden – Manchester-born Nobel Prize–winning biochemist
• Benjamin Heywood (1793–1865) – prominent Manchester citizen, philanthropist and politician
• Oliver Heywood – English banker and philanthropist
• Bernard Hill – film, stage and television actor, known for playing Yosser Hughes in Boys from the Blackstuff and roles in blockbuster films, including Titanic, The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and True Crime
• Myra Hindley – Gorton-born serial killer who, along with her accomplice, Ian Brady, claimed the lives of five victims in Manchester in the 1960s
• Peter Hook – bassist of the bands Joy Division and New Order
• Mick Hucknall – lead singer of the band Simply Red
• Howard Jacobson – Man Booker Prize-winning British Jewish author and journalist, best known for writing comic novels that often revolve around the dilemmas of British Jewish characters
• Davy Jones – actor; singer of the band the Monkees
• Michelle Keegan – actress on Coronation Street
• Brian Kidd – football coach; assistant manager at Manchester City since December 2009; former player; assistant manager to Alex Ferguson at Manchester United in the 1990s; member of the Manchester United team that won the European Cup in 1968; born in Collyhurst
• Harold Lever – Labour politician and Baron Lever
• Martin Lewis – Withington-born financial journalist who founded MoneySavingExpert.com
• David Lloyd George – born in Chorlton-in-Medlock; British Prime Minister during the First World War; member of the Liberal Party
• Sunny Lowry – Longsight-born swimmer who was the first British woman to swim the English Channel
• Bernard Manning – Ancoats-born stand-up comedian
• Sir Ernest Marples – Postmaster-General and Minister of Transport; born in Levenshulme
• Johnny Marr – songwriter, guitarist, keyboardist, harmonica player and singer, rose to fame in the 1980s as the guitarist in the Smiths
• Ian McShane – actor who grew up in Manchester
• Mohyeldeen Mohammad – Islamist activist who studied in Saudi Arabia prior to his deportation
• Steven Patrick Morrissey – singer in the Smiths, born in Davyhulme
• Daniel Moult – concert organist, organ tutor and animateur, ensemble player and presenter of films about music
• Gary Mounfield – "Mani" is a bassist, formerly of the Stone Roses and later in Primal Scream

N–Z

• Doug Naylor – comedy writer, known for creating the comedy series Red Dwarf
• Jason Orange  – singer, songwriter, dancer, former member of Take That
• Emmeline Pankhurst – suffragette, born in Moss Side
• Anshel Pfeffer  – journalist
• Karl Pilkington – podcaster, author and television presenter; known for his work with Ricky Gervais
• Fee Plumley – digital artist
• John Charles Polanyi – chemist, brought up in Manchester; won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research in chemical kinetics
• Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859) – born in Manchester; author and intellectual; known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821)
• Lee Rigby – of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers; originally from Middleton, Greater Manchester; Lee, whilst off-duty and walking back to barracks, was killed by two Islamic extremists on 27 May 2013 as a terror attack
• Marc Riley – musician; alternative rock critic and radio DJ on BBC 6 Music; former member of the Fall; had his own record label, In-Tape; also worked as a record plugger
• Andy Rourke – bass guitarist best known for being a former member of the Smiths
• Shaun Ryder – vocalist and songwriter with the Happy Mondays who became famous in the Madchester era
• Peter Saville – Manchester-born artist and designer, best known for his work with Factory Records
• John Squire  – guitarist with the Stone Roses
• Nobby Stiles – born in Collyhurst, former football midfielder Stiles, Bobby Charlton and Ian Callaghan are the only Englishmen to have won both World and European Cups
• Bernard Sumner – singer-songwriter, guitarist, keyboard player and producer, best known as a founding member of two bands, Joy Division and New Order
• John Thaw – actor; known for his roles in The Sweeney, Inspector Morse and Kavanagh QC; born in Longsight, brought up in Burnage
• Joanna Thomas – IFBB bodybuilder
• John Thomas – recipient of the Victoria Cross
• J. J. Thomson – physicist and Nobel laureate; credited with the discovery of the electron and of isotopes, and the invention of the mass spectrometer; awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the electron and his work on the conduction of electricity in gases
• Shayne Ward – singer who won the second series of The X Factor
• Danny Webber – professional footballer, formerly of Manchester United and Sheffield United
• Danny Welbeck – footballer who plays for Arsenal F.C.
• Sir Joseph Whitworth
• Andy Williams – drummer and vocalist of the Doves
• Jez Williams – guitarist/songwriter of the Doves
• Tony Wilson  – co-founder of Factory Records and Granada reporter
• Michael Wood – historian and broadcaster; has presented numerous television documentary series; has made over 80 documentary films
• Alan Wren – known as Reni; drummer of the Stone Roses

See also

• List of music artists and bands from Manchester

References

Bibliography