Pankhurst, born Emmeline Goulden in 1858 in Moss Side, was introduced to the women’s suffrage movement by her parents. She married Richard Pankhurst, a barrister who supported women’s rights, and she formed the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903. She was imprisoned countless times, and usually spent her short sentences on hunger strike. As the figurehead of the suffragette movement she used the slogan “Deeds not words” to justify the WSPU’s militant action. She died in 1928, the year the Equal Franchise Act was passed, granting women the same voting rights as men Photograph: Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
Manchester has a ridiculous abundance of music maestros and icons, from Sir Charles Hallé and Sir John Barbirolli to Ian Curtis, Ian Brown, Shaun Ryder, Guy Garvey, Liam and Noel. But it’s Steven Patrick Morrissey who still inspires devotion like no other, and generally walks away with any public vote for “greatest Mancunian”. No matter that he fled the roost long ago. He has sung about the beauty and despair of everyday life in Manchester more than anybody else, and Morrissey and Johnny Marr remain the Mancunian reunion the public are desperate for above any other Photograph: Brian Rasic/Rex Features
Ferguson is an adopted Mancunian who embraced the city as his own. His 27 years as manager is a record that will never be broken. United started life in 1878, and remarkably Ferguson has managed more than a fifth of their matches since then, winning 13 league titles, five FA cups and 38 trophies. Nearly half of his most successful team was Mancunian – Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, the Neville brothers and, er, David May. One might argue Giggs and Scholes should be in this top 10 too. Giggs made his debut in about 1936, and Scholes is, as Xavi has said, “the best midfield player of the last 20 years” Photograph: Offside Sports/Rex Features
Born in 1956 in Radcliffe, the Oscar-winning director transformed British cinema in the 90s with Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. His other films include Slumdog Millionaire, which won eight Oscars. He’s always been an idealist, and the world glimpsed his vision with the Olympics opening ceremony. When Tory MP Aidan Burley denounced Boyle’s “Isles of Wonder” as “leftie multicultural crap” it was Burley who was ridiculed, not Danny, the champion of the people. Boyle subsequently declined a knighthood, saying: “I believe in being an equal citizen rather than a preferred subject” Photograph: Stewart Cook/Rex Features
Aherne’s family moved when she was two from Ealing to Wythenshawe in south Manchester, known as one of the largest council estates in Europe, which was later home to her creation The Royle Family. She began as a standup, before starring in The Fast Show. She became a household name as the faux-naive Mrs Merton – ”So, what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” But her finest achievement was reinventing the sitcom with The Royle Family, ditching slapstick and punchlines for economy of language and heart-warming portrayal of the minutiae of family life Photograph: Matt Squires/BBC
He was Mr Manchester, though he always made clear he was actually from Salford, darling. Granada TV presenter, co-founder of Factory Records and the Hacienda, the man who signed Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays – the way Wilson empowered others to achieve may be his greatest testament. His wonderful excess of civic pride infected and inspired a generation and drove the regeneration of Manchester. “The idea of the city as an attractive vibrant place to be begins with rock’n’roll,” he once said. Let us not forget his co-founders of Factory, Rob Gretton and Alan Erasmus. Tony was the public face because they let him be Photograph: Ged Murray/Rex Features
John Anthony Burgess Wilson, born in 1917 in Harpurhey, was a prolific novelist, poet, critic, playwright and composer. He is best known for A Clockwork Orange, which was infamously adapted for film by Stanley Kubrick in 1971, but he wrote 33 novels including the Booker-shortlisted Earthly Powers, 25 non-fiction books, three symphonies, and more than 150 other works. In his autobiography Little Wilson and Big God, he recalled how, for a Mancunian, a visit to London before the war “was an exercise in condescension. London was a day behind Manchester in the arts, in commercial cunning, in economic philosophy”. He died in 1993 Photograph: Jane Bown for the Observer
Laurence Stephen Lowry worked as a rent collector until he saw factory workers coming out of the Acme Mill in Pendlebury one day and “suddenly I knew what I had to paint”. Many had written about the world’s first industrial city, including Engels, Marx, Dickens, Gaskell and Disraeli – who wrote in 1844: “Have you seen Manchester? Manchester is as great a human exploit as Athens.” But Lowry, born in Stretford in 1887, was the first to paint it. He may be unfashionable to blinkered critics, but his matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs captured the spirit and legacy of the industrial revolution Photograph: Michael Pollard/© The Estate of L.S. Lowry
The mathematical genius, second world war codebreaker and computer-science pioneer may not be a true Mancunian, but he moved to the city to join Manchester University’s world-leading computing department in 1948. He was prosecuted for his homosexuality (still then illegal) in 1952 and accepted chemical castration as an alternative to prison. His death in 1954 from cyanide poisoning was initially classed as suicide, but that was later questioned and others say it was accidental. In 2009, Gordon Brown, then prime minister, apologised on behalf of the government for “the appalling way” Turing had been treated Photograph: PR
The Coronation Street creator, born Anthony McVay Simpson in Swinton on 8 July 1936, spent his early years listening to his mum and aunties gossip and chatter in his grandma’s kitchen. He trained as an actor before those formative years gave him inspiration for a television series based on “a little back street in Salford, with a pub at one end and shop at the other, and all the lives of the people, just ordinary things…” Initially named Florizel Street, it was renamed Coronation Street and within six months became the most watched programme in Britain. It is the world’s longest-running TV soap opera Photograph: Christopher Thomond
