"It was the best of pints. It was the worst of pints". So begins Charles Dickens's great drinking novel, An Ale of Two Cities.

You'll be believing this and more by the time you've supped at some of Manchester's greatest ale houses: perhaps the Briton's or the Pev or the Abercrombie or Tom's or Sam's in between the best of Manchester history. We would have gone to Tommy Duck's as well but the bastards at Greenall Whitley knocked it down.

This is an intellectual pub crawl. We get paralytic with eye-opening Manchester history spun from the inexhaustible well of Ed Glinert's knowledge as we veer from pub to pub.

* This is an official Manchester tourist board event.