Pies and Prejudice: In search of the North by Stuart Maconie #
Blurb: A Northerner in exile, Stuart Maconie goes on a journey in search of the North, attempting to discover where the cliches end and the truth begins.
He travels from Wigan Pier to Blackpool Tower and Newcastle's Bigg Market to the Lake District to find his own Northern Soul, encountering along the way an exotic cast of chippy Scousers, pie-eating woollybacks, topless Geordies, mad-for-it Mancs, Yorkshire nationalists and brothers in southern exile.
Notes: Amusing but as it's 13 years old quite a few of the pop culture references seem dated already. Like a Northern Bill Bryson on a trip around the UK. :) As Stuart is from the NW of England the book is a bit more of a homage to his homeland. Yorkshire and the NE do get mentioned but in nothing like the glowing ways he talks about the NW. That said it is a good read and an entertaining mix of facts and observatons. Would recommend.