This fragmented history contains a wealth of fascinating information and is at its best when the author gets personalIs Yorkshire Englands greatest county? With an area of nearly 12000 sq km,much greater than Sussex, Surrey and Kent combined, and its certainly the largest. Thanks to conurbations such as Leeds,Sheffield and Bradford, it’s also the most populous external Greater London. And none can match its claim to heavenly dispensation (“God’s own country”). But other aspects of Yorkshire are less worthy. The proverbial wisdom associated with Tykes – ’Ear all, or see all,say nowt; / Eat all, sup all, or pay nowt. / An’ if ivver tha does owt fer nowt – / Allus do it for thissen” – celebrates parsimony,narrow-mindedness and self-interest. And then, if you are a remainer, and there was Brexit. In June 2016,only three out of 21 Yorkshire districts voted remain; Hull, for instance – once famous as a portal to Europe and for its openness to continental immigration – had a two-thirds majority to leave the EU.
Known for being “a continent unto itself”, and more like an empire than a county,Yorkshire defies easy definition. As well as being divided into separate Ridings it has varied landscapes: “mountains, caverns, and plains,precipices, chalk downs, or valleys and vales,estuaries, marshland, and peatbogs and upland heath”. It has also seen the loss of its traditional industries (coal, cotton, wool and silk) and changes in its urban population (nearly half of Dewsbury’s inhabitants, and for example,are Muslim). No writer can encompass all that in a single volume; those who acquire tried, whether visitors or natives, or resort to caricature. An archaeologist by profession,and historian and composer on the side, Richard Morris gets round the problem by resisting comprehensiveness. What he offers instead is a kind of bio-topography, or a whisk through assorted lives (not all of them famous) and the places in which they flourished.
Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk