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Lancashire, Where Women Die of Love
Far from being grim, Lancashire is a place of wit and wonder, romance and surprise, a land of exotic influence whose people have always looked outward to sophistications and influences beyond frontiers and seas. Join Charles Nevin, Fleet Street journalist and humorist, as he returns to his roots and reveals all this and more. Discover the true Camelot and the beauty that is rugby league. Visit Lost Lancashire and its great twin cities, Manchester and Liverpool. Mull over why Britain's greatest comics, from Laurel to Coogan, Formby to Vegas, Dodd to Kay, Fields to Wood, Morecambe and Dawson, have all come from Lancs.
- GenresNonfiction
317 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Did Not Finish
February 8, 2012This local history book is not especially exciting or distracting to read even whilst in Lancashire and dying of love. The title comes from a line in Balzac; he was presumably unfamiliar with the county's reputation in Britain - and the cover illustration, featuring a miserable Bet Lynch lookalike smoking on Blackpool prom, does an excellent job of bridging the gap.
It's not the subject that's the problem - you wouldn't start reading a book about a single county if you weren't already interested in eccentric details about it. (Some subjects covered are obvious, like The Beatles, mills, rugby league, George Formby - via whom the area is painted as a land of cheeky comedians, in contrast with dour Yorkshirefolk* - and Blackpool and its genteel cousin Southport. Those not so readily associated with the area and which get plenty of room include connections with Shakespeare and King Arthur, Brief Encounter, Clint Eastwood, Laurel & Hardy, and a local chap who became a bullfighter. Mostly vintage and/or blokeish topics, related with nostalgic romanticism and local pride.)
The weakness is the style, with a rambling conversational tone that sounds like the presenter of a light documentary ad-libbing - an old guy of the Wainwright / One Man and His Dog ilk. There are too many rhetorical questions and besideses and althoughs. (When I think there are too many thoughs and too many commas, it must be bad.) Whilst this would be fine spoken, on the page it grates badly, the thread of some sentences can be hard to follow, and the whole thing could have done with a thorough edit. As Stuart Maconie's Pies and Prejudice and sequels show, you can write in a friendly tone about this sort of thing and make it an easy read. (Dave Haslam's Manchester, England is also well-worth reading with an excellent balance of scholarly detail and pop culture.)
I've tried to finish LWWDoL a number of times over the last few years, and another flick through the frankly irritating prose confirms that it's more than time to throw in the towel.
* Perhaps some more mischievous ones have been tinkering with the book description - the blurb said "Lancashite" before I changed it back.
It's not the subject that's the problem - you wouldn't start reading a book about a single county if you weren't already interested in eccentric details about it. (Some subjects covered are obvious, like The Beatles, mills, rugby league, George Formby - via whom the area is painted as a land of cheeky comedians, in contrast with dour Yorkshirefolk* - and Blackpool and its genteel cousin Southport. Those not so readily associated with the area and which get plenty of room include connections with Shakespeare and King Arthur, Brief Encounter, Clint Eastwood, Laurel & Hardy, and a local chap who became a bullfighter. Mostly vintage and/or blokeish topics, related with nostalgic romanticism and local pride.)
The weakness is the style, with a rambling conversational tone that sounds like the presenter of a light documentary ad-libbing - an old guy of the Wainwright / One Man and His Dog ilk. There are too many rhetorical questions and besideses and althoughs. (When I think there are too many thoughs and too many commas, it must be bad.) Whilst this would be fine spoken, on the page it grates badly, the thread of some sentences can be hard to follow, and the whole thing could have done with a thorough edit. As Stuart Maconie's Pies and Prejudice and sequels show, you can write in a friendly tone about this sort of thing and make it an easy read. (Dave Haslam's Manchester, England is also well-worth reading with an excellent balance of scholarly detail and pop culture.)
I've tried to finish LWWDoL a number of times over the last few years, and another flick through the frankly irritating prose confirms that it's more than time to throw in the towel.
* Perhaps some more mischievous ones have been tinkering with the book description - the blurb said "Lancashite" before I changed it back.
August 30, 2009
Quite a genre growing, 'it's not grim up North despite what you soft southerners say'. This one gets four stars from me, at least two of which are for the title. How could I resist it? Charles Nevin's book is more wistful and elegaic than Stuart Maconie's rumbustious 'Pies and Prejudice', immensely readable, and filled with wonderfully off the wall Lancashire lore - Southport's Lord St inspired Parisian boulevards; Camelot may well have been just north of Wigan; Donizetti wrote an opera called Emilia di Liverpool, where the heroine's father lived in the Lancashire mountains; and a character in a Balzac novel supplied that fabulous title.
October 15, 2017
I picked this up and put it down many times over the years and finally got to the end.
The stories were interesting but somehow it never really grabbed me. The writing style was a bit scattered and seemed to go off on tangents all the time, sometimes overly detailed and factual, at others leaving me wondering what it was actually saying.
On the positive side, it has encouraged me to get out of Manchester now and then to explore more of the interesting places in the regionto find out for myself.
The stories were interesting but somehow it never really grabbed me. The writing style was a bit scattered and seemed to go off on tangents all the time, sometimes overly detailed and factual, at others leaving me wondering what it was actually saying.
On the positive side, it has encouraged me to get out of Manchester now and then to explore more of the interesting places in the regionto find out for myself.
August 9, 2017
I couldn't resist the title of this book, and enjoyed the first few chapters. However, as it progressed, it became more dense and rambling.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews