For decades, the North East was home to the right sort of Left. Durham, Tyneside — these are places rich in labour history and heraldry, ancient seedbeds of a working-class trade unionism which predates the Labour Party itself. But, though …
Do Geordies want to be Vikings?
Geordies, it is said, “have long wished to be Vikings”. So some among us might have looked north with envy last week. It’s not often that Orcadian irredentists make international headlines, but the suggestion that the Orkneys might be reunited …
Starmer will regret purging the Left
On Wednesday evening, when Labour members in North West Durham gathered to choose whom to back as the new mayor for the North East, they were given a strict warning: there should be no mention of Jamie Driscoll. The party …
Why the North needs its Angel
Just as Brooklyn is to Manhattan and Pest is to Buda, the town of Gateshead has long been in the shadow of its grander neighbour across the water. Dr Samuel Johnson, who visited in the eighteenth century, thought the town …
The North East will rise again
My corner of England has long been regarded as a land apart: a sort of English ultima Thule, with a sociable and hedonistic outlook recognisably different from the rest of the nation. That culture is expressed in everything from the …
The rebirth of Newcastle
There’s a glorious curvaceous grandeur to Victorian railway architecture. I love the sinuous bends of those northern English stations whose geography prevents them from being termini but who nevertheless try to give themselves the airs of one. None is greater …
Geordie Shore is bourgeois now
“And girl it looks so pretty to me, like it always did; Oh like the Spanish City to me, when we were kids”, purred Mark Knopfler on the Dire Straits track “Tunnel of Love”. “So rock away, rock away; Cullercoats …
Michael Gove won’t save the North
Recently, the Prime Minister found himself on Tyneside but thought he was on Teesside. So what’s the problem, other than straightforward stupidity? The problem is that the British road to power rarely leads north, and at a time of much …
