There will be a formal launch of Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart, by Gavin Hopps, at 4 o’clock on Saturday 7th November, in the Manchester University branch of Blackwell (University Precinct Centre, Oxford Road).

The event will involve a live performance by the acclaimed tribute band The Smiths Indeed, a talk by the author, as well as wine and Morrissey fairy cakes.

All are welcome.

Here is what Simon Reynolds has to say about The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart:

‘The best book-length explication of Morrissey’s peculiar genius I’ve come across. Acute when it does address the music, it focuses mostly on Morrissey’s lyrical and vocal strategies (coyness, flirtation, caesuras and suggestive trailings away, irruptions of non-sense such as animalistic/Tourettic/comedic growls, ascent into nonverbal raptures of yodeling falsetto), then explores how these particular ways with words announce and embody a particular way of walking through the world; a life stance and ethic. Hopps managed to convince me that there’s hidden depths and often-missed mischief secreted within the later work’s deceptive slightness and can’t-be-arsed-ness. A majorly illuminating work.’