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 enlarge | Author: Stuart Maconie
Publisher: Ebury Press
Category: Book
List Price: £6.99
Buy New: £2.21
You Save: £4.78 (68%)
New (27) Used (7) from £2.21
Rating:  49 reviews
Sales Rank: 544
Media: Paperback
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1
ISBN: 0091910234
Dewey Decimal Number: 914.270486
EAN: 9780091910235
ASIN: 0091910234
Publication Date: February 7, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: different cover
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| Customer Reviews:
 Should be on every southerner's reading list....! June 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Very funny, readable, sincere and affectionate. Stuart Maconie sums up all that is the north (and north-west) to me. A great read, wish I'd have written it. He could write another 3 books on this area and I hope he does. Well done!
 View from even further north June 2, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am a Scot, therefore Stuart Maconie is a southerner to me, but I decided to read his book as the north of England isn't a part of the country I am altogether familiar with.
The book is clearly a love letter from Maconie to "the north" but he lets himself down a little with his chip on the shoulder attitude towards the Londoncentric media. I hear this from Nationalists up here all the time and the fact of the matter is that sometimes the better story is in the south - the Millennium Bridge in Newcastle didn't make the news because it was perfectly constructed and didn't wobble like the one in London did for example.
I also found his chapter on the wealth in the north a bit on the smug side - it was almost as if he hadn't noticed there was wealth "oop north" until he left the place and came back to do research for his book.
He has done me an enormous favour however - I read the book and booked a trip to vist Manchester and Liverpool. My knowlege of the north of England is limited to Blackpool, some Yorkshire and Newcastle, and that shames me. I lived in London for many years and travelled extensively in the south of England. My husband was a Londoner and displayed many of the prejudices Maconie talks of in his book.
I well remember taking a train south that went through Wigan and my husband was absolutely delighted and amused to be stopping in Wigan - which fully made me understand Maconie's comments about his hometown being a figure of fun.
Now I find myself (somewhat prematurely) a widow, I have the freedom to explore these places with an open mind.
It was wonderful to learn of places I had passed through on the train (being another great train traveller over the years)and learning a little more about the names on the station signs. Bury came alive for me - a place full of character and warmth. Durham, always a beauty from the train, became a must see stop on the East Coast Mainline.
I also read the book and thought of George Michael's song "A Different Corner" because when I was 18 I had been offered a place at Newcastle Polytechnic but instead had my head turned by another Stuart, Cosgrove this time, who was lecturing at a college in Reading. He charmed me with his wit, intelligence and ironically enough, a picture of the Highland clearances.
So perhaps the lesson to be learned is to be a little cautious of love letters written by people in exile.
 Didn't finish it... May 13, 2008
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
I have been accused of "laughing at anything" and enjoy many different forms of comedy, but this book didn't even raise a slight titter. Oh, by the way, I come from the North East and there are plenty of crap chip shops up here too. Overall though I couldn't finish the book as I was irritated by his pompous, vague and shallow outlook on life in both the North and South of England. I personally think it is hard to differentiate between the 'North' and 'South' nowadays as people move around so much; hence the old fashioned stereotypes are few and far between.
Maybe I didn't find this funny because I'm not from Lancaster? May 8, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
I have to disagree with almost every other reviewer: this book wasn't funny. It had none of the wit of Bill Bryson, to whom the author was compared, or Peter Kay, whose quotation was featured on the cover. It just rambled on and on about how the author didn't really know much about the South except that it's definitely not as good as the North and the chips are crap. If he only knows London and one part of Essex (I think it was Essex, might have been Sussex) that he stayed in with an ex, how on earth is he supposed to write a book about the North/South divide? From peeking at these reviews it seems he only knows a few places in the North well.
I always judge these books on whether, when reading about the places I've been to, I can relate to the cliches mentioned and laugh. I didn't laugh once at this book - oh, except where he said Northerners come from hard and dangerous places and Southerners think it's "edgy" to live in Hackney, displaying a lack of knowledge of London and indeed the definition of the word edgy - and having lived in London all my life I was sorely disappointed at his watery, vague description of the place. It didn't make fun of the strange things Londoners do or talk about the cliches centred on us. It was just vague whining about the Tube not being as good as Norther rail lines.
Northerners and Southerners alike should use this book as toilet roll in my opinion.
 Southern slasher! April 20, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is a good indicator of the state of the North of England today from someone who obviously loves the fact that he was born a northerner. It's worth a read, but in his quest 'in search of the north' he comes across as very anti-south and anti-southerner, despite the fact that he lives in the West Midlands (which isn't the North of England) and earns his living mostly in London!
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