At times as mournful as a drunken chorus of 'Ferry 'Cross the Mersey', Liverpool is a city of contrasts, of decrepit tenements and stunning Grade 1-listed public buildings, gargantuan cathedrals and boarded-up shops. Liverpool will be forever synonymous with the Fab Four, two football clubs and a famously testing steeplechase, but these days the city with the glorious past is hoping to re-create itself as a premier European city.

Essential to Liverpool's resilient and acid-tongued character is its dramatic situation on the broad estuary of the River Mersey, with its shifting light, fogs, gulls and poignant emptiness. For 200 years Liverpool ruled the seas as a world-beating port and cornerstone of the British Empire, built on slavery, commerce and emigration. The city entered an extended period of decline when container shipping killed off the docks in the 1960s, and signs of degradation are still sadly all-too evident. But Liverpool's sense of identity is as fierce as ever, the grand public buildings are still standing, the Beatles legend grows stronger every year and pride in 'the Pool' remains stubbornly strong.