I am a proud Mancunian, despite the fact I haven’t lived there permanently since I left school for university when I was 18. I was born in St. Mary’s hospital near the city centre, was raised in a pleasant suburb in South Manchester, and attended a normal primary and junior school in a nearby, tougher neighbourhood, before attending Burnage for secondary school. Thirty-eight years after I attended Burnage, so, apparently, did Salman Abedi, the suspected Manchester Arena bomber.

The atrocity carried out by Abedi, for which the Islamic State has claimed credit, is probably worse than the dreadful bombing by the Irish Republican Army that destroyed parts of the city centre 21 years ago, an event that many believe played a key role in Manchester’s renaissance. At least in that case, the bombers gave a 90-minute warning that helped avoid loss of life. Abedi’s barbaric act, by contrast, killed at least 22 people, many of them children.