Chapter 17
Irish Verve Meets English Restraint

It wasn’t just Liverpool’s musical DNA that was altered by migration from Ireland over the centuries. The cities that saw the greatest intake of Irish people fleeing poverty and starvation are now the crowned sites of Britain’s music scene - London, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow. In 1861 the total of Irish born living in England, Wales and Scotland had reached 805,717 and through the first half of the twentieth century Ireland continued to be the main source of migration to England.