Northerners: The bestselling history of the North of England

Product Information

Amazing that no one has apparently written this book before, but luckily Brian Groom has now made an excellent job of filling that gap.

And then I guess it became something of an identifier representing a sense of community for the miners? I guess I would recommend this if you want somewhere to start with Northern History but I think books about specific regions and/or time periods would probably be better. However, as the book goes on a (solid enough) general history of England is revealed, with the accent on wider events, Kings and Queens etc, with what seems to be references to the north. I thought this book was brilliant from the beginning up to the Industrial Revolution, creating a compelling narrative about the North.Worked for almost three decades at the Financial Times, where he did many of the top writing and editing jobs, including comment and analysis editor and political editor. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

When diving into a very particular aspect of the north's history, such as migration, leisure or even sheep farming, Groom's broad historical brush strokes pay off dividends. There were also little asides that say something about what it is to be Northern that didn't align with my own perceptions of the North and Northern history. I would have liked to have seen more on the development of the major cities in West and South Yorkshire and the North East. Everyone knows about the north’s leading role in the Industrial Revolution, viewed by many economic historians as the key event in human history, but there is far more to it. The connections between the north and the south are too deep for this awkward and simplistic division.I think it was a good starter to learning some of the history of Northern England but it was also frustrating for me to read. Groom sets out to create a proper history of the north of England and the people that identify as northerners. I kept trying to identify what it was that was lacking in the book that made it more of a chore to read than a pleasure, before deciding that what the book was lacking was a bit of heart.

Thankfully the footnotes and the select bibliography have given me somewhere to go next in my exploration of Northern history. The north has not only witnessed some of the country’s most dramatic events, it has also been pivotal to them. It also embraces the scenery of the north, and Groom's accounts of Liverpool, the Pennines, Northumbria and Manchester are all very evocative. It really does near enough go back to Roman times, this North and South divide, but you begin to understand why and how impactful all those decisions, layered on top of each other, create the varied Northern landscape we see today.

A visitor to some of the more affluent areas of the North East might find there is actually more of an affinity with kindred villages and towns in the south than there is within the varied communities of the north of England. A couple of small criticisms:- there were so many Kings flying about in the Anglo-Saxon chapter that I got a bit confused.