The Little Book Of Yorkshire Dialect

Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling. Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave was published in 1968, and was made into one of the key British films of the sixties. Billy Casper is beaten by his drunken brother, ignored by his mother and failing at school. He seems destined for a hard, miserable life down the pits, but for a brief time, he finds one pleasure in life: a wild kestrel that he has raised and tamed himself.

The Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller by the shepherdess and star of Channel 5’s Our Yorkshire Farm. 'With its fizzing energy and celebration of nature and community, this is perfect comfort reading for uncertain times' – Daily Mail Amanda Owen loves her traditional life on her hill farm alongside her nine children and husband Clive. And, as readers of her previous bestsellers will know, every day at Ravenseat brings surprises. In Adventures of the Yorkshire Shepherdess Amanda takes us from her family’s desperate race to save a missing calf to finding her bra has been repurposed as a house martin’s nest, and from wild swimming to the brutal winter that almost brought her to her knees. As busy as she is with her family and flock though, an exciting new project soon catches her eye . . . Ravenseat is a tenant farm and may not stay in the family, so when Amanda discovers a nearby farmhouse up for sale, she knows it is her chance to create roots for her children. The old house needs a lot of renovation and money is tight, so Amanda sets about the work herself, with some help from a travelling monk, a visiting plumber and Clive. It’s fair to say things do not go according to plan! Funny, evocative and set in a remote and beautiful landscape, this book will delight anyone who has hankered after a new life in the country.

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?

This anthology of Yorkshire dialect from the 18th century to the present day, includes poems, humorous stories, sayings, proverbs and other examples of classic Yorkshire material.

Investigates how dialect variation in the North of England is represented in writing.