In YORKSHIRE, Richard Morris looks beyond stereotypes, exploring interactions between landscape, language, and memory. The county is one of Europe's most geologically varied areas - a realm where mountain, plain, coast, chalk hills, wetland and heath lie close, often within sight of each other. Morris considers how we discover Yorkshire, whether as modern travellers, through eyes of artists (J. M. W. Turner, William Sawrey Gilpin, William Callow, Henry Moore) or writers' imaginations (Michael Drayton, Winifred Holtby, J.B. Priestley, Ted Hughes). We travel to strange places, like the county's netherworld of caves, mines and tunnels, and confront dark subjects such as the part played by Whitby and Hull in the emptying of Arctic seas and shores of whales and bears. In contrarian spirit, Morris even finds Robin Hood to have been a Yorkshireman.YORKSHIRE explore the tumultuous history of God's Own County and asks why it has so often been to the fore in times of conflict or tension (think Wars of the Roses, Northern Rising, Civil War, Cold War, the miners' strike of 1984). Outward-lookingness is a repeating theme. Eighteen centuries ago a province of the Roman Empire was governed from York; in the Viking age a trading axis ran from Dublin through the kingdom of York to the Baltic, along Russian rivers to Byzantium and Baghdad. Both in area and population Yorkshire today is larger than many member countries of the UN, yet remains just an English county. As Richard Morris reveals in this dazzlingly wide-ranging and lyrical history, Yorkshire has always been both a region with a distinct identity inside Britain and a fulcrum in the world.
Industry Reviews
[A] restless, poetic, strange book, and the territory it describes deserves nothing less -- Andrew Martin * Observer *
[A] quirky, personal history of the Ridings ... Making an idiosyncratic selection of events from prehistory to the present day, and using some charming passages of personal memoir, Morris subtly draws out patterns and recurring themes that may explain the county's distinctive history ... Morris writes insightfully not just about one county, but about how places become what they are -- Richard Benson * Mail on Sunday *
Reading the book is like watching the author sift through layers of time: whatever will he turn up next? ... There is a wealth of fascinating information - I'd not known, for example, that the fashion for naming houses 'Windyridge' (as both my father and grandfather called theirs) derived from the popularity of a 1912 novel of that title by Willie Riley -- Blake Morrison * Guardian *
In this meticulously researched book, Richard Morris reveals Yorkshire and Yorkshireness through a series of extraordinary journeys and stories ... Particularly interesting is the juxtaposition of nature, culture, religion and politics and the way in which places are defined and shaped by geography and terrain ... Morris's description of the River Swale as glittering and energetic could be a metaphor for his own writing, which is itself relentlessly energetic ... Fascinating -- Adrian Dangar * Country Life *
Although it is one of the most diverse counties geographically, Yorkshire has always inspired a fierce loyalty among those born there, and it is this sense of place that is the subject of the fascinating Yorkshire * Choice *
Engrossing ... Aims to look beyond the Eee By Gum stereotypes to explore the intersections between Yorkshire's landscape, language and identity, and reflect too on how outsiders perceive the county * The Bookseller *
County histories have been around considerably longer than many of our present counties, but in that heavily populated landscape this is no ordinary book, and its author no ordinary writer ... With footnotes to do an academic paper proud, Morris constantly comes across stories that he can't leave alone, that he burrows into, finding new connections and insights and behind which, you imagine, often lie sufficient materials for books of their own -- Mike Pitts * British Archaeology *
One of the most unusual and thought-provoking guides to the county's distant and recent past * Craven Herald *
[L]earned and gripping -- Alan Crosby * Who Do You Think You Are? magazine *
