North

Product Description

Here is the north this is where it lies where it belongs full of itself high up above everything else surrounded by everything that isn't the north that's off the page somewhere else... Paul Morley grew up in Reddish less than five miles from Manchester & even closer to Stockport. Ever since the age of seven old enough to form an identity but too young to be aware that 'southern' was a category Morley has always thought of himself as a northerner. What that meant he wasn't entirely sure. It was for him as it is for millions of others in England an absolute indisputable truth. But he wondered why when as a child he was so ready to abandon his Cheshire roots & support the much more successful Lancashire cricket team & when as an adult he found he could travel between London & Manchester in less than two hours he continued to say he was from the North. Forty years after walking down grey pavements on his way to school Paul explores what it means to be northern & why those who consider themselves to be believe it so strongly. Like industrial towns dotted across great green landscapes of hills & valleys Morley breaks up his own history with fragments of his region's own social & cultural background. Stories of his Dad spreading margarine on Weetabix stand alongside those about northern England's first fish & chip shop in Mossley near Oldham. & out of these lyrical memories rise many disconnected voices of the north; Wordsworth's poetry Larkin's reflections & Formby's guitar. Morley maps the entire history of northern England through its people & the places they call home
- from the frozen landscapes of the Ice Age to the Norman invasion to the construction of the Blackpool tower
- to show that the differences go deeper than just an accent. Ambitiously sweeping & beautifully impressionistic without ever losing touch with the minute details of life above the M25 The North is an extraordinary mixture of memoir & history a unique insight into how we as a nation classify the unclassifiable.