A Review By Rev David Boulton

Martin Wainwright, Guardian journalist and Northerner – he is that paper’s Northern Editor – portrays a region that is flourishing socially and culturally, even while it languishes industrially. True North is full of details of northern life both past and present, with lots of illuminating anecdotes, all supported by a wonderful selection of photographs drawn from the archives of The Guardian, which was after all the only national newspaper to begin life outside London. As Harry Pearson in The Daily Mail says, “Any book that references St Hilda and Les Dawson in the same chapter is clearly worth a look.”

True North is certainly worth a look, and when you’ve had a look you’ll see that it is eminently worth a read. It discusses culture, nature and cottage industries; it looks at the old north and the new. It does not ignore the ‘Eee bah gum” and ‘Ecky thump’ stereotypes, it tempers them with wit and some unlikely facts; in doing so it challenges popular misconceptions about the north and dispels the myths of appalling weather, slag heaps, comically thick accents, ruined townscapes wreathed in grime – the whole ‘It’s grim oop t’north’ thing.

 Instead, we see – yes, how some of these old clichés arose in the first place. But we are also allowed to glimpse a picture of the north as it truly is today – wild coastlines, lakes, green dales, all inhabited by stubborn and resolutely inventive northerners who are proud of their past (sometimes excessively so) and keen to forge for themselves a new future of new enterprise.

 I’m not a northerner (despite what my daughter says!) But I am a North Midlander who went to University in the North East, so I really enjoyed this book. Unless you are ultra parochial and very small minded in your outlook., you will too.