Neither Nowt Nor Summat

I’m going to define the essence of this sprawling place as best I can. I’m going to start here, in this village, and radiate out like a ripple in a pond. I don’t want to go to the obvious places, either; I want to be like a bus driver on my first morning on the job, getting gloriously lost, turning up where I shouldn’t. I’m going to confirm or deny the clichés, holding them up to see where the light gets in. Yorkshire people are tight. Yorkshire people are arrogant. Yorkshire people eat a Yorkshire pudding before every meal. Yorkshire people solder a t’ before every word they use... If there were such a thing as a professional Yorkshireman, Ian McMillan would be it. He’s regularly consulted as a home-grown expert, and southerners comment archly on his ‘fruity Yorkshire brogue’. But he has been keeping a secret. His dad was from Lanarkshire, Scotland, making him, as he puts it, only ‘half tyke’. So Ian is worried; is he Yorkshire enough? To try to understand what this means Ian embarks on a journey around the county, starting in the village has lived in his entire life. With contributions from the Cudworth Probus Club, a kazoo playing train guard, Mad Geoff the barber and four Saddleworth council workers looking for a mattress, Ian tries to discover what lies at the heart of Britain’s most distinct county and its people, as well as finding out whether the Yorkshire Pudding is worthy of becoming a UNESCO Intangible Heritage Site, if Harrogate is really, really, in Yorkshire and, of course, who knocks up the knocker up?

As entertaining as it is informative, this dictionary offers records and explanations of a northern English dialect. The research presents information about words that go back as far as the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings as well as those present in today's vernacular. Ideal for anyone interested in English etymology, this reference is thorough and essential.

When Rosie Jones' sweetheart Sean Quinnan is killed in a building accident, she knows the blame lies with her childhood tormentor Joe Brindle. But though Rosie longs for justice she has more pressing matters to deal with - when she find she is carrying Sean's baby she is disowned by her mother and loses her job. Salvation comes in the form of war veteran George Metcalf. He's prepared to make an honest woman of her and accept another man's child as his own. Although he doesn't stir her heart, Rosie knows George is a good man. But even with a husband to protect her, will she ever be truly safe from Joe Brindle.

Welcome to Hell. One evening, Dante finds himself lost in a dark and menacing wood. The ghost of Virgil offers to lead him to safety but the path lies through the terrifying kingdom of Satan, where Dante witnesses the strange and gruesome sufferings of the damned. Written while Dante was in exile and under threat of being burned at the stake, this dramatic, frightening and, at times, sardonically humorous vision of Hell still has the power to shock and horrify

A brilliant new thriller about poetry and fascism In the 1930s a young poet and patriot, Richard Jameson falls in love with the socialist daughter of Sir Henry Exton, a powerful media mogul. But in courting her, he finds himself embroiled in a fascist struggle for influence over the heart of the establishment. After Thatcher sweeps to victory during the 1980s, Jameson is on the verge of being rescued from obscurity, but finds the ghosts of his fascist past have not been laid to rest. Sean O'Brien's new play dramatises the literary history and politics of the 1930s and 1980s and asks chilling questions about the historical possibility of a fascist Britain.

Leon Hunt's entertaining and illuminating study offers the most sustained analysis of 'The League of Gentlemen. He contextualises the series as a 'cult classic', discussing its place within traditions of British comedy, its references to horror and fantasy and its creation of a grotesque and self-contained world.