What people eat is also telling. Let’s take fish and chips as an example. In Scotland chips are served with a tangy sauce called “chippie sauce” but in London you’re more likely to have chips with gravy. In the Midlands they have “wet chips” which means they are smothered with baked beans or mushy peas. What sets the book apart is the scale and geographical focus. Groom does an excellent job of bouncing around topics, and his skills really flourish in later chapters. When diving into a very particular aspect of the north's history, such as migration, leisure or even sheep farming, Groom's broad historical brush strokes pay off dividends. He gets to leap across centuries and pull together different parts of northern history which a narrower focus wouldn't allow. It makes for a fun read and is perfect for anybody wanting a neat overview of the region. It also embraces the scenery of the north, and Groom's accounts of Liverpool, the Pennines, Northumbria and Manchester are all very evocative. If you hear a Northern kid exclaim, "Ayup, come and look at this!" stay out of his way. These are likely the last words he will say before the explosion. The way the book is structured threw me off at times too because it jumps around in time an awful lot due to tangents but, to be honest, that is a minor qualm.

Do you know Peter Kay?' Just because I live near Bolton doesn't mean I personally know the guy." – Jess, Manchester Northerners poke fun at the way southerners pronounce R’s in front of the A’s in words like bath and laugh. These words come to sound like “barth” and “larff.” And in reverse southerners take the piss out of northerners for changing words completely and having weird colloquialisms.Northerners accuse southerners, especially Londoners, of being “southern fairies.” This means they think people from the South don’t know what an honest day’s work means and spend too much money in wine bars.

The first night was allowed in the north until Queen Alysanne Targaryen convinced King Jaehaerys I Targaryen to abolish it. [34] Some northern lords still discretely practice it, however. [39] In the video game Game of Thrones - A Telltale Games Series, House Forrester lives at Ironrath in the wolfswod. Their rivals, House Whitehill, live at Highpoint between the wolfswood and the northern mountains. [22] The name of Rillwater Crossing, seat of House Glenmore, suggests it may be in the Rills.MORE : 25 reasons the North of the UK is way better than the South 7. They don’t understand the chips and gravy hype A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. As I said, this is not an analytical account, and some of the thornier issues of northern identity are side stepped. There is also a little bit too much polishing over historical events which would make for a more interesting book. Rather than interrogating northern identity, Groom's aim here seems to be to present the identity in the first place. Instead of over analysing historical turns or unknotting historiographies, Groom is telling the story of the north of England. How it began, what happened and why it is what it is today. It's a simple, effective history book which could be read by anyone with an interest. As it should be. This easily-readable history of the north of England is not a coherent narrative. It reads as a collection of independent, semi-linked chapters rather than a free-flowing, interconnected whole. And it is a reminder that the north of England is not an easily defined entity. There is a real difficulty in writing a separate history of the north, because the north is not separate from England. The connections between the north and the south are too deep for this awkward and simplistic division. On the other hand, regional differences are more genuine, something that the book brings to light. I fear that in some sense the book wants to divide, that the author wants to leave us with uncertainty and open wounds rather than conclude with healing or at least aim towards it. On several issues. Yep, this is the classic, my friends always ask me why I'm putting gravy on my chips. They also have no idea what scraps are." – Abbie, Newcastle How can you be warm? It's freezing!