Like with fast railways, financial services and film studios, the North is missing out – this time on dedicated Shakespearean theatres. London has the Globe, a replica of an Elizabethan theatre, and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, which is a replica of a Jacobean one. The Midlands has Stratford-upon-Avon’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre, home of the Royal Shakespeare Company, with an auditorium that is a modern interpretation of a Shakespearian-era theatre.

Now the North is finally getting its very own Tudor replica to address this imbalance. Appropriately, it is called Shakespeare North Playhouse and has been built in a modest town called Prescot, 10 miles from Liverpool’s waterfront.

Why build such a significant theatre in a small town when, in true northern tradition, there is only one slow train an hour to Liverpool? The answer is a combination of historical precedent – there is evidence of a long-vanished Elizabethan theatre in Prescot – and an enterprising council that set about levelling up Prescot long before Boris Johnson politicised the term.

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