Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North

Review Summary: In Search of the North West

Review:

As a northerner who has been living in East Anglia for the past five years I really enjoyed this book. I would have given it five stars but there were a few things that annoyed me about the book. Firstly, far too much time is spent talking about the north west. The north east is hidden away in one brief, but admittedly entertaining, chapter at the end of the book. As a smoggy a found this a bit irritating. On a related point, I found the comment about northerners finding rugby union a bit posh and foreign rather odd. Rugby league may be the dominant form of rugby for Lancastrians and Yorkshie folk from the east and west ridings, but it is rugby union that rules in the north east and the north riding of Yorkshire. We find rugby league just as dull and one-dimensional as southerners.

There is also one astonishing omission in this book. Whither York? One of the north's great cities isn't mentioned once while, on the other hand, we are treated to detailed descriptions of the merits of Bury! Blimey.

Note to Stuart's copy-editor: Leeds is ten miles east of Bradford, not west as claimed in the book. More north western bias/ignorance at work I suspect.

Review Summary: makes me want to go North

Review:

As I come from London, I think Maconie gets the mix right between highlighting the good of the North with the over hype of the South. It certainly made me think I should spend more time visiting places in this country than going abroad

Review Summary: Suffers from parochialism he affects to despise

Review:

Maconie has made some good points about the North-South divide and there are one or two good jokes among the many predictable cliches. However, the thrust of his argument is weakened by his own parochialism. While criticising the South of England for its chauvinistic view of the North, he demonstrates the same chauvinistic attitude to other parts of the North, especially the whole county of Yorkshire. While one might expect this from a Lancastrian, it weakens the force of his argument. By sterotyping Yorkshire people so harshly, he is no less guilty of prejudice than his Southern counterparts. (I was born in Manchester, have lived for long stretches in both Yorkshire and the South, and have friends all over, so I find this pettiness grating).

Reading between the lines of Maconie's book: Southerners are bigoted ponces, Yorkshiremen are little better, nobody cares about the Midlands or the North East, which leaves the North West, Maconie's homeland, as the only place in England to find warm, witty and wonderful people. How lucky Maconie is to have been born there!

Is the North really so riven and tribal as Maconie's book suggests?

Review Summary: Bit too much of the same

Review:

I found this quite funny, but a chapter or two - or make that an essay, really would be enough. After a while the ever samey tone and chippiness (which he tries to disguise but can't) starts to grate a bit.

Review Summary: In search of some northern soul

Review:

The North-South divide in Great Britain is the subject of this rather tongue-in-cheek travelogue by Northern journalist and broadcaster Stuart Maconie.

For non-Brits, the divide is not an exact line, but one which refers to the economic and cultural differences between southern England and the rest of the country, including Scotland. It involves many stereotypes, including the belief that Northerners are thick and Southerners are posh. Or, as Maconie, a Northerner transplanted to the South, puts it:

"Good or bad, 'the north' means something to all English people wherever they hail from. To people from London -- cheery costermonger, cravated fop or Shoreditch-based web designer on stupid scooter alike -- it means desolation, arctic temperatures, mushy peas, a cultural wasteland with limited shopping opportunities and populated by aggressive trolls. To northerners it means home, truth, beauty, valour, romance, warm and characterful people, real beer and decent chip shops. And in this we are undoubtedly biased, of course."

The enchantingly entitled Pies and Prejudice takes us on a wonderful tour of the North, with the erudite and charming Maconie as our host. Having watched Maconie on a many a TV show, I couldn't help but hear his Wigan accent as I read this book, which made the experience all the more enjoyable. (Indeed, I hope that at some point he turns it into a documentary series, as it would make fascinating viewing.)

As one would expect from a journalist who champions pop music, the book is littered with musical references, such as this:

"The Smiths' songs drip, like an evening drizzle off the Moors, with references to Manchester and its environs. Rusholme, Strangeways, Southern Cemetery, Whalley Range, the Holy Name Church. Morrissey has a video called Hulmerist, a wry reference to his childhood home. In an early interview, he said of his artistic self, 'I am forever chained to a disused railway line in Wigan'. While Thatcher, witchlike, cast the north into outer darkness, The Smiths' songs illuminated it anew with northern light and fireworks. We loved them for it."

But it's also clear that Maconie enjoys history and architecture and food, because these subjects are constantly referenced throughout as he makes his way across the country. Each chapter is littered with fascinating facts and figures and snippets of trivia, all delivered in the writer's trademark witty prose style, which is rather reminiscent of Bill Bryson.

His greatest skill, however, is bringing rather drab places to life. He has a certain knack of saying so much in just a few sentences, lovely thumbnail portraits, if you will.

"Where Bury Market excels, though, is food. In the new Fish Market you can gaze, slightly unnerved, at the dead, sightless eyes of row upon row of sea bass and snapper, mackerel and trout lying in state on funeral dais of crushed ice and parsley. The stalls are staffed by either blonde girls in full make-up who you just know are dying to get out that white coat and into their skimpy glad rags this weekend or cheery rubicund men holding up what look like conger eels and joshing in ribald style with housewives. All of them adhere to Maconie's first law of market trade: cheeriness is proportional to the gruesome nature of the wares being handled. The grislier the fare, the gayer the banter."

By the time I got to the last page I felt bereft: it was that same kind of sad feeling one experiences when a much-enjoyed holiday draws to a close. Having learnt so much about the northern regions of England in Maconie's company, I was itching to go out there and visit these places myself. Highly recommended, whether you are from North, South or somewhere else entirely!