True North: In Praise of England's Better Half

Abysmal weather, slag heaps, funny accents, the bleak uplands of a landscape carved out of millstone grit and townscape of abadoned mills and shipyards, the detritus of an industrial revolution past its sell-by date. That, anyway, is the myth, the foundation for the dismissive gibe that nothing north of Watford is worth a bag of chips. This and other myths are swiftly dispatched in "True North" - an incisive and wittily observant assessment of a socially and culturally flourishing region that can boast an unrivalled setting of wild coastline, lakes and green dales, as well as inhabitants who are indomitably inventive, proud of their past and keen to forge a brilliant new future.