Back Up North
by Ally Shepherd
After a decade overseas, Ally Shepherd got stuck in the Northwest of England amid 2020’s pandemic chaos. She promptly became a born-again Northerner and, probably annoyingly, wanted to tell the world.
Documenting her journey to understand herself through the region in which she grew up, she explores its pressing questions, such as: Is there still a North/South divide? Was she descended from a Pendle witch? Why does Liverpool have a slavery museum? What’s with Scouse and Geordie accents? Where are Northern women’s stories in TV, film, and literature? And is it okay to eat chips, cheese and gravy? (Spoiler: The answer to the last question is ‘yes’).
Drawing on history, politics, pop culture, and folklore – as well as a childhood in Cheshire, family stories from Lancashire, and an education in Yorkshire – Back Up North explores the region’s diverse legacy of food, music, literature, dialect, social change and superstition. Give it a read, pet. Tha might learn summat.
