u/MatthewJackson3

I was 11 years old, living in Levenshulme, when the IRA bomb went off in Manchester.

It is probably the first major news event I can properly remember. I did not understand the politics of it, but I remember knowing something massive had happened. Manchester city centre was somewhere familiar, somewhere normal, and suddenly it had become part of history.

Looking back now, what stands out most is not just the damage, but how the city came back from it. Manchester rebuilt, changed, grew and carried on.

There have been other awful days since, and plenty of setbacks, but Manchester has always had something about it. People come together when it matters.

Thirty years on, I still think about that day. I think about everyone caught up in it, and how much of the Manchester we know now was shaped by the rebuilding that followed.