So Spirited A Town: Visions and Versions of Liverpool, by Nicholas Murray

An entertaining history of a city built on blood, sweat and tears

In 1797, the Rev William Bagshaw Stevens arrived at Liverpool by sea and marvelled at the 1,200 ships at anchor in the massive docks. But his diary also noted that in "this large-built town, every Brick is cemented ... by the blood and sweat of Negroes". Tony Blair apologised for the slave trade on which Liverpool's prosperity was built, but the descendants of the working-class that lived and died in appalling poverty and degradation in the city may have to wait a while for any expression of regret.

Nicholas Murray's book is particularly strong on the traditions of radicalism and socialism that have marked Liverpool for more than 200 years. In 1775, a quasi-revolutionary insurrection by seamen was put down, but not before they had bombarded the Town Hall with cannon. Workers' riots occurred up until the 1920s. This political history is perhaps in danger of being forgotten, but Murray reminds us that he was born, in 1952, into what was essentially a Victorian city still marked by extremes of poverty and wealth.

He skilfully weaves memories of his own Irish family and Catholic childhood into a witty and sensitive history. He was educated by the ungentle Christian Brothers; another victim, in his fine phrase, of "their dejected arrogance". The Irish were a prominent part of the city's population, but there were also large black, Chinese, Jewish and Muslim communities – the first mosque in England was founded here. Liverpool was, as De Quincey wrote, "many-languaged".

Murray quotes liberally from other writers who visited or lived in the city: a surprisingly varied lot. Emily Brontë's Heathcliff was brought as a boy from the city, "speaking an incomprehensible gibberish". Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American Consul, and depressed by the place. Gerard Manley Hopkins served as a priest in a slum area, and his poem "Felix Randal" is based on the death of a parishioner. Inquisitive as ever, Dickens went into the roughest waterfront areas where the "ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used" seamen lodged between voyages. The father of Cavafy was a merchant in the city, and the great Alexandrian poet spent three years of childhood there.

Murray's extremely entertaining book doesn't forget the humour of the place. While this might sometimes reinforce the cliché of the feckless Liverpudlian, it remembers a hard history and is knowingly self-lacerating: "What do you call a Scouser in a suit? The Accused."