Preliminary Material -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on Contributors -- Northern England and the Spaces of Identity / Christoph Ehland -- Re-thinking Northern Politics? Northern England and Devolution / Thomas Leuerer -- Dialect and Regional Identity in Northern England / Christoph Schubert -- The ‘North’ of ‘England’: A Paradox? / Stephan Kohl -- “Such girls as you would hardly see anywhere else in England…”: the ‘regional feminine’ of Mary Linskill’s fiction / Jan Hewitt -- Diamonds or Beasts? Re-mapping English Conceptions of Northernness in the Late Victorian Periodical / Annisa Suliman -- Northern Racism: A Pilot Study of Racism in Sunderland / Amir Saeed -- Manchester and the “Hypocritical Plan”: Architecture, Shopping and Identity in the Industrial City / Mark Crinson -- The New Livercool: History, Culture and Identity on Merseyside / John Belchem -- The Lake District and Yorkshire Dales: Refuges from the Real World? / Ian Whyte -- Beyond the Industrial Revolution: the Transformation of Britain’s Canals and their Cultural Meaning / Richard Stinshoff -- Speed, Steam and Nostalgia: The Heritage Railways of Northern England / Konrad Schliephake and Keith Sutton -- Constructing an Emblematic Northern Space under Thatcherism: The New Brighton Photographs of Martin Parr and Tom Wood / Merle Tönnies -- Of Popular Spaces: Northern Heterotopias, Morrissey and the Manchester Britpop Scene / Ralph Pordzik -- Between L.S. Lowry and Coronation Street: Salford Cultural Identities / Susanne Schmid -- Classy Northerners: Class, Space and the Wonderful Illusion / Christoph Ehland -- Northern England in Facts and Figures / Christoph Singer -- Statistics: Population Resident Population Table 1a -- Index.

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Thinking Northern offers new approaches to the processes of identity formation which are taking place in the diverse fields of cultural, economic and social activity in contemporary Britain. The essays collected in this volume discuss the changing physiognomy of Northern England and provide a mosaic of recent thought and new critical thinking about the textures of regional identity in Britain. Looking at the historical origin of Northern identities and at current attitudes to them, the book explores the way received mental images about the North are re-deployed and re-contained in the ever-changing socio-cultural set-up of society in Northern England. The contributors address representation of Northernness in such diverse fields as the music scene, multicultural spaces, the heritage industries, new architecture, the arts, literature and film.