steepholm

So strongly was the "mythical North" implanted in my consciousness that when I was summoned to interview for a place at Durham University, I seriously expected to see miners in pit helmets with lights on them. I never have seen one to this day except on TV and film.

I have taught many times now - short stories can be a godsend at the end of term, and several of these have an awful lot packed into a small space - , for example, always delights twelve-year-olds. I do always teach them as historical stories now - as I do Kestrel for a Knave, for that matter - there are significant elements that no longer make sense to children without being contextualised. Old money, for example.

The North, like the South, is always much more complicated than you think. I'm a Midlander, and nobody has much in the way of preconceptions or expectations of us beyond a Brummie accent. Northerners hear me as "posh", southerners as "Northern" very often. When you look at Yorkshire you realise that it's full of affluent enclaves - not just York, but Harrogate, Beverley, many of the coastal towns like Scarborough and Whitby - as well as several quite distinctively different types of industrial or post-industrial area - Bradford and the Woollen District (J B Priestly territory) are very different to Doncaster, and Sheffield is different again. The thing I always notice about Yorkshire is the suddenness of the transitions, too - from Bradford to Haworth, for example. Lancashire is smaller but has a similar mix - Lancaster is a total contrast to Rochdale for example.

Mrs Gaskell got something of the feel of this a century and a half ago, of course, in , which I consider her greatest book. Preconceptions about each do neither any good.