This is the 12th, and my last, in a series of ‘Six of the Best of Yorkshire’. It has been a great pleasure to produce these articles for Yorkshire Bylines over the last seven months. Here, I explore some of the greatest cultural creations that have come out of the county over the years. It’s a rich legacy of music, fine art, poetry, novels, plays and film. Selecting six from such a treasure trove is difficult, but I have taken the liberty of using regional categories that allow for more examples. From each, I’ve chosen just one outstanding example.
My cultural choices are:
- Literature from the East Riding – Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
- Social realist West Riding literature and film – Ken Loach’s Kes
- Great artists in the Dales – Turner’s Aysgarth Force
- Popular music from the Steel City – Pulp’s Razzamatazz
- National treasures: two West Yorkshire playwrights – Alan Bennett’s The History Boys
- Rail poster advertising from the golden era of travel – Jack Merriott’s Robin Hood’s Bay
Literature from the East Riding – Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
The East Riding has the least dramatic landscape of Yorkshire, much of it is flat and perhaps hard to love. Maybe, this helps explain why much of the greatest writing to come out of this neglected region has a melancholic tone. Often the poetry of Hull-based Andrew Marvell and, four centuries later, Philip Larkin, feels steeped in sadness. That is also true of Winifred Holtby’s masterpiece 1936 novel, South Riding, which is, of course, set in the real East Riding.
Larkin came to Hull in 1954 as the librarian at the expanding university and stayed until his death 30 years later. He is widely regarded as the best poet of his age and much of his work is inspired by Hull and the surrounding countryside. Particular favourites of mine are Here and Whitsun Weddings, both with a powerful sense of that essential of regional writing: genius loci, or spirit of place.
South Riding is a magnificent novel, as is the ITV adaptation of the 1970s featuring Dorothy Tutin as its school mistress heroine. Whenever I have visitors who want to understand East Yorkshire, I advise them to read this novel.
I’ve chosen Marvell’s exceptionally powerful love, or lust, poem as my key selection. Marvell was not only a poet, but also the MP for Hull. The line in To His Coy Mistress –“I by the tide Of Humber would complain” is immensely evocative especially to those who know and love the mercurial waters of the vast estuary. His statue in Hull has lines from the great poem at its base, sadly, they are now very hard to read and ought to be restored.
Social realist West Riding literature and film – Ken Loach’s Kes
In the 1950s and 60s a remarkable series of gritty novels and films emerged from the declining wool towns and mining villages of the West Riding. Writers such as Stan Barstow and Barry Hines pushed boundaries with their social realist work. Often these wonderful novels, such as the rugby league themed, A Sporting Life, were adapted into outstanding films.
This is particularly true of the magnificent Ken Loach-directed 1969 movie, Kes, based on the Hines novel A Kestrel for a Knave. No film is as good at showing the realities of growing up and going to school in that era: I know as I was there! The football lesson sequence with the wonderful Brian Glover playing a PE teacher wishing he was Bobby Charlton is just sublime.
Great artists in the Dales – Turner’s Aysgarth Force
It is unsurprising that the Yorkshire Dales landscapes have attracted many talented artists such as Cotman, Ward, Atkinson Grimshaw, and in more recent times, Ashley Jackson. Each have produced beautiful pictures, especially in the artist’s paradise of Wharfedale. It is, however, Britain’s greatest landscape painter who is most associated with depicting the Dales in all its infinite variety and charm.
Turner made many visits, sketching and painting our castles, abbeys, rivers and waterfalls. His output is staggering and usually breathtaking. Turner understood the changing light and weather of the Dales and depicted it with unmatched skill. My favourites include Hardraw Force, Easby Abbey and Richmond Castle. A few years ago I was very fortunate to buy, at a decent price, an original lithograph by Turner of the magnificent lower falls at Aysgarth; it’s a treasured possession.
Popular music from the Steel City – Pulp’s Razzamatazz
Sheffield has a proud and lengthy tradition in popular music, it’s maybe the beat and rhythm of the city’s once thriving furnaces resonating down the years. The early 1980s were a golden period with bands like Heaven 17 and the Human League soaring to national and international fame. For many it’s the Arctic Monkeys, forged in the wonderful Grapes pub on Trippet Lane, that are the zenith of this tradition.
For me it’s the early albums of Jarvis Cocker’s Pulp that are the high point. His lyrics are so Sheffield – direct, but also affectionate and lyrical, from the soul of a city where everyone is called ‘love’. His N’ Hers is a fabulous album that has stood the test of time over three decades. My favourite Pulp song Razzamatazz was added to the US version of the album. It gets under the skin of the harsh realities of working-class life, brightened by the occasional glitz of Saturday nights out in the city. These lyrics typify Pulp at their best, delivered to a driving beat:
“Are you gonna go out?
Or are you sitting at home eating boxes of milk tray?
Watch TV on your own
Aren’t you the one with your razzamatazz and the nights on the town?”
Fantastic, hard-core poetry.
National treasures: West Yorkshire playwrights – Bennett’s The History Boys
Bradford and Leeds respectively produced two of the nation’s outstanding playwrights in JB Priestley and Alan Bennett. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls has long been a feature of GCSE English courses. Its themes of social justice and class inequality, with a supernatural twist, have a near universal appeal. As well as his plays, Priestley was a much-admired radio broadcaster, a rare northern voice on the BBC especially in the second world war years. His output is just pipped by the prolific and much-loved Bennett.
Alan Bennett’s many TV plays are a remarkable body of work, particularly in their witty and shrewd reflections on life in the north. I think his greatest work is The History Boys, but that is unsurprising as I spent most of my career as a history teacher. The play gets under the skin of bright, aspiring boys from the north seeking entry to our elite universities. The teachers are pitch-perfect portrayals of many in the profession when I first entered it in 1982. The film version is equally as good as the play.
Rail poster advertising from the golden era of travel – Jack Merriott’s Robin Hood’s Bay
For some 40 years, from the 1920s to the 1960s, our huge number of railway stations were plastered with what were often stunning artworks, in the form of adverts to visit other places on the rail network. Reproductions of these are enormously popular nowadays and originals fetch huge sums, often at specialist auctions.
Yorkshire, being such an enormous county with lots of areas of natural beauty, many historic buildings and fine old towns and villages has a huge portfolio of these iconic images. Some of the best rail artists were drawn to Yorkshire subjects, such as Sheffield’s Kenneth Steel. Jack Merriott was arguably the best of the crop, his fabulous poster of Robin Hoods Bay adorns the front cover of a magnificent book on the subject. I feel it’s a great place to end our journey through some of the highlights of Yorkshire culture.
With views like this, who can tire of this special place?
