Northerners

A History, from the Ice Age to the Present Day

By: Brian Groom

Narrated by: Nicholas Camm

A Waterstones Best History Book of 2022

The bestselling history of the North of England as told through the lives of its inhabitants.

A work of unrivalled scale and ambition, Northerners is the defining biography of northern England.

This authoritative new history of place and people lays out the dramatic events that created the north–waves of migration, invasions and battles, and transformative changes wrought on European culture and the global economy. In a sweeping narrative that takes us from the earliest times to the present day, the book shows that the people of the north have shaped Britain and the world in unexpected ways.

At least six Roman emperors ruled from York. The Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria was Europe’s leading cultural and intellectual centre. Cartimandua, Queen of the Brigantes, deserves to be as famous as Boudica. Neanderthals and Vikings, Central European Jews, African-Caribbeans and South Asians, have all played their part in the making and remaking of the north. Northern writers, activists, artists and comedians are celebrated the world over, from Wordsworth, the Brontes and Gaskell to LS Lowry, Emmeline Pankhurst and Peter Kay. St Oswald and Bede shaped the spiritual and cultural landscapes of Britain and Europe, and the world was revolutionised by the inventions of Richard Arkwright and the Stephensons. The north has exported some of sport’s biggest names and defined the sound of generations, from the Beatles to Britpop.

Northerners also shows convincingly how the past echoes down the centuries. The devastation of factory and pit closures in the 1980s, for example, recalled the trauma of William the Conqueror’s Harrying of the North. The book charts how the north-south divide has ebbed and flowed and explores the very real divisions between northerners, such as the rivalry between Lancashire and Yorkshire.

Finally, Brian Groom explores what northernness means today and the crucial role the north can play in Britain’s future. As new forces threaten the fabric of the UK again, this landmark book could scarcely be more timely.

©2022 Brian Groom (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"Brian Groom is one of the most respected journalists of his generation—an essential writer on politics and business and a tireless champion of the North." (George Parker, political editor, Financial Times)

"Few people are better placed to write the story of Northerners than Brian Groom, one of journalism’s most astute observers of the state of Britain." (Helen Pidd, North of England editor, The Guardian)

Mediocre

I was thoroughly disappointed. The book is really poor on anything before the XVI century. It is also in some portions more a history of England with isolated mentions to the North every once in a while, rather than a volume about the North. It also misses on giving causes for issues, focusing ok inventorying events and unconnected data.

The book absolutely lacks structure, reading more like a sequence of (sometimes interesting) isolated facts and anecdotes, rather than a book. There is no logic to the way the chapters are organized, and none again within chapters, were often one feels that the paragraphs have been scrambled at random. The point in Chapter 28 where the author jumps from the Manchester United plane crash in 1958, to dance halls in the 1920s, to Churchill getting elected, in consecutive sentences, illustrates this quite amusingly.