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Anorak in the UK

live album by Marillion

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ4770155 ↗
Source-derived summary

Anorak in the UK is a live album by Marillion released in April 2002 and documenting the previous year's Anoraknophobia tour. Most songs were recorded on three nights in May 2001 (Manchester Academy, 19 May, Wolverhampton Civic Hall, 20 May, London Forum, 22 May) using a mobile studio, while two tracks ("When I Meet God" and "This is the 21st Century") were recorded in front of a small private audience at the band's own studio after the October leg of the tour.

The album was released in two versions: A two-disc set only distributed via Marillion's own mail-order business, and a one-disc retail edition distributed by EMI. Under this deal, EMI required the band to provide one exclusive song on the retail edition that would not be found on the two-disc version. The band chose "Easter" from 1989, as it is available on several previous official and semi-official live albums and therefore would not "force" fans to purchase both versions of the album. Anorak in the UK is Marillion's first official retail live album since Made Again (1996), and the second with Steve Hogarth. The title takes its cues from the Sex Pistols single "Anarchy in the U.K." and, self-mockingly, the British slang term anorak (a person with unfathomable interest in arcane, detailed information regarded as boring by the rest of the population) often applied to Marillion fans. The cover shows a crowd consisting of "Barry" featured on Anoraknophobia.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Anorak in the UK” is live album by Marillion. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Anorak, live and album, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2002, 2001, 1989, 1996—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2002. For this dossier, Anorak, live and album is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “live album by Marillion” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4770155. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2002, 2001, 1989 and 1996.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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  • Tracing reception history
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Anorak in the UK”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Anorak in the UK primary sources, Anorak in the UK archive and Anorak research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Anorak in the UK”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Anorak in the UK” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.