Yorkshire: A lyrical history of England's greatest county

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He wrote his first novel, 1974, purely for his own satisfaction, researching 1970s Yorkshire using the microfiched British newspapers in the Japanese public libraries; his father persuaded him to submit it for publication, and the small independent firm Serpent’s Tail published the book in 1999. Castle Hill Bookshopin Richmond has an excellent collection of books about the local area and helps to organise the Richmond Walking and Book Festival together with Swaledale Outdoor Club and a team of volunteers. The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley on the fringes of the Yorkshire Dales has an excellent selection of books, is a good place to learn more about the Ilkley Literary Festival & has an added benefit - it's very close to a branch of Bettys' Tea Rooms!

Sheep farmer, Amanda Owen is continuing the tradition of documenting and recounting farming life in the Yorkshire Dales with The Yorkshire Shepherdess and A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess. Neil Hanson gives a completely different insight into life in the Dales with The Inn at the Top, his account of thetrials and tribulations of life as the landlord at Tan Hill, England's Highest Inn. The Yorkshire Dales are peaceful and fairly crime-free and yet the area has somehow inspired a myriad of crime-writers. Susan Parry lives in Swaledale which she uses as her setting for her series of mysteries, peppered with local details such as details of lead-mining in the past. Simon Armitage was born in Huddersfield, West Riding of Yorkshire, and grew up in the village of Marsden, where his family still live. Armitage was appointed Poet Laureate on 10 May 2019. He is professor of poetry at the University of Leeds and succeeded Geoffrey Hill as Oxford Professor of Poetry when he was elected to the four-year part-time appointment from 2015 to 2019. Our adopted poets… Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985)Sometimes the world feels like a fierce, uncomfortable place. We're bombarded with stories of political unrest, constant technological change, and unpleasant scandals. The temptation to retreat from all this, to look for a better world is strong. Space exploration is one option. Burying your head in a good book is infinitely easier. Born in West Yorkshire near Pontefract. In 2005, he won two BAFTA’S for a film he wrote and directed on location in Hull. His plays are performed across the world, Bouncers being the most popular. A playwright with a passion for Yorkshire… The young David filled a scrapbook with newspaper cuttings about the Ripper and photographs of his victims. There was no agreement among witnesses as to what the killer looked like, and in schools it was common for boys to exchange taunts along the lines of “your dad’s the Ripper!”. David’s grisly imagination pursued the idea to its logical conclusion: for a time his father, whose work as a junior school headmaster often kept him out late, was his number one suspect.

So it's wonderful to be able to bring you some excellent news. Books and bookshops are flourishing! The American born poet, novelist and short story writer, described Heptonstall as ‘wild and lonely and a perfect place to work’, and at least one of her poems (November Graveyard) seems to refer to it. Sylvia responded to Haworth and the Brontë legacy in several poems written after walking the area. Yorkshire playwrights Peace dedicated 1977 “to the victims of the crimes attributed to the Yorkshire Ripper, and to their families … [and] to the men and women who tried to stop those crimes”, while stressing that “this book remains a work of fiction”. Peace plays with the facts in his quartet: Sutcliffe is renamed Peter Williams, and the victims’ names are also changed, with the details of their lives and deaths altered too. Peace has always been clear that his books have a moral force. “The majority of British crime novels are a nonsense,” he said in 2010. “The Crime Writers’ Association has an award for a comic crime novel. How absurd to create this false picture of what reality is. Crime is not cosy, but brutal and destructive. It devastates people’s lives.”

Books

The Stripey Badger opened recently in Grassington and also has a cafe next door so you can enjoy the heady combination of culture and cake. What more could anyone want? Well obviously, there are no limits to how many books a true bibliophile can hoard. If that sounds like you, you could do worse than head to Sedbergh, England's book town where you'll find the wonderful Westwood Books and several other great book shops or shops that sell books among other items. Investigating the death of an ex-serviceman in police custody reveals the disappearance of a young family. No one noticed. No one seems to care. In the grip of a bitter Yorkshire winter, a family home reluctantly offers up its grisly secrets. Out on the moors, a murder scene of horrific brutality demands Caslin's focused attention. In the search for answers, is anyone who they claim to be? From Winstead, near Hull, Andrew Marvell is said to be one of the 17th century’s great metaphysical poets. His best known piece of work being the poem, To His Coy Mistress. Ted Hughes (1930 – 1998) Anne was the youngest of the sisters, she died while on holiday to Scarborough where she is buried. She published under the name Acton Bell, her works include… David Peace knows it was impossible to avoid hearing the word “Ripper” being shouted or whispered in West Yorkshire at that time: he was there. Peace was born in 1967 and grew up in Ossett, near Dewsbury.

From Leeds, ten of her books have been made into mini series and television movies. The No. 1 best-selling author of women’s fiction over the last 30 years. Highlights of her long career include: On January 5 1981 his father woke him with the words: “They’ve caught him.” David, then aged 13, bunked off school to join the “baying crowd” that assembled for Sutcliffe’s first appearance in court in Dewsbury. Emily only had one novel published before her death at the age of 30 from tuberculosis. Her last words were “If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now”. She wrote… Anne, Charlotte and Emily are known worldwide due to their passionate literary classics. Born in Thornton, Bradford, they later moved to Haworth where the majority of their work was written and where you can find the Parsonage Museum. The trio wrote their initial works under pen names due to the misogynistic nature of the publishing industry at the time. The three sisters were not the only Brontë sisters as they had older sisters Elizabeth and Maria, who both unfortunately died before reaching adulthood. Charlotte Brontë (1816 -1855)The melodramatic events are underpinned by Peace’s eerie evocation of the psychogeography of West Yorkshire, his characters being haunted with a sense of the area’s violent past, conjured up in his incantatory, mesmerically repetitious prose: he is a novelist who is perhaps best read out loud. Are these books modernist fiction disguised as crime thrillers, or vice versa? They are certainly unlike anything else in crime fiction. Artist Ian Scott Massie has collected a series of tales and folklore and illustrated them with his beautiful and distinctive style for Tales of the Dales.Colin Speakman also gathers together local stories into Legends of the Yorkshire Dales. The Red Riding Quartet garnered more attention with each volume, and in 2003 Peace was named in Granta magazine’s prestigious list of the Best British Writers under 40, although he did not take part in the photo shoot: “I remember thinking, they look like a bunch of w______. They’re all London-based. They just seem a literary elite.” He has gone on to find further success with his novel about Brian Clough, The Damned Utd (filmed in 2009 with Michael Sheen) and a trilogy of offbeat crime novels set in Japan.