Customer Rating:  
Summary: Non stop tour
Comment: Great read, being 'a northern lass' I thought I knew much about the area but this book re-energised my desire to find out more. Maconie talks of his own direct experiences and then relates back to how certain ways of doing things have been born out of the history of our fore fathers. A travel guide in disguise, this book will cause you to seek out new people and places. Enjoy 'the North' and its very real characters.
Customer Rating:
Summary: In Search of the North West
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: makes me want to go North
Comment: 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
Customer Rating:
Summary: Suffers from parochialism he affects to despise
Comment: 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?
Customer Rating:
Summary: Bit too much of the same
Comment: 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.
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