Description
After a decade overseas, Ally Shepherd got stuck in the Northwest of England amid 2020's pandemic chaos. She promptly became a born-again Northerner and, probably annoyingly, wanted to tell the world.
Documenting her journey to understand herself through the region in which she grew up, she explores its pressing questions, such as: Is there still a North/South divide? Was she descended from a Pendle witch? Why does Liverpool have a slavery museum? What's with Scouse and Geordie accents? Where are Northern women's stories in TV, film, and literature? And is it okay to eat chips, cheese and gravy? (Spoiler: The answer to the last question is 'yes').
Drawing on history, politics, pop culture, and folklore - as well as a childhood in Cheshire, family stories from Lancashire, and an education in Yorkshire - Back Up North explores the region's diverse legacy of food, music, literature, dialect, social change and superstition.
Give it a read, pet. Tha might learn summat..
About the Author
I am a Northerner by both nature and nurture. I did a DNA test for my thirtieth birthday, hoping to find some far-flung ancestry, but it fairly predictably declared that I was 81 per cent Northern (80 per cent of that Northwestern). The rest was Scottish and Irish, my dad's great-grandfather came down from the Highlands of Scotland, with one per cent Swedish (thanks to past invading Vikings, I assume). I managed to trace my family's marriage, birth, and death certificates back to the 1600s and it was pretty uniform: white, working-class Lancashire, with a couple of white, working-class Yorkshire folk thrown in for good measure. There were factory workers and beer sellers (no surprise there) and those who ended up in the Poor House, though one thing they all had in common was that their roots stretched down into Northern soils.
Book Information
ISBN 9781068618994
Author Ally Shepherd
Format Paperback
Page Count 224
Imprint Scratching Shed Publishing Ltd
Publisher Scratching Shed Publishing Ltd
Documenting her journey to understand herself through the region in which she grew up, she explores its pressing questions, such as: Is there still a North/South divide? Was she descended from a Pendle witch? Why does Liverpool have a slavery museum? What's with Scouse and Geordie accents? Where are Northern women's stories in TV, film, and literature? And is it okay to eat chips, cheese and gravy? (Spoiler: The answer to the last question is 'yes').
Drawing on history, politics, pop culture, and folklore - as well as a childhood in Cheshire, family stories from Lancashire, and an education in Yorkshire - Back Up North explores the region's diverse legacy of food, music, literature, dialect, social change and superstition.
Give it a read, pet. Tha might learn summat..
About the Author
I am a Northerner by both nature and nurture. I did a DNA test for my thirtieth birthday, hoping to find some far-flung ancestry, but it fairly predictably declared that I was 81 per cent Northern (80 per cent of that Northwestern). The rest was Scottish and Irish, my dad's great-grandfather came down from the Highlands of Scotland, with one per cent Swedish (thanks to past invading Vikings, I assume). I managed to trace my family's marriage, birth, and death certificates back to the 1600s and it was pretty uniform: white, working-class Lancashire, with a couple of white, working-class Yorkshire folk thrown in for good measure. There were factory workers and beer sellers (no surprise there) and those who ended up in the Poor House, though one thing they all had in common was that their roots stretched down into Northern soils.
Book Information
ISBN 9781068618994
Author Ally Shepherd
Format Paperback
Page Count 224
Imprint Scratching Shed Publishing Ltd
Publisher Scratching Shed Publishing Ltd
