YORKSHIRE'S STRANGEST TALES: Extraordinary But True Stories

Yorkshire is a county with more strangeness than you can shake a Dale walking stick at. Home of Robin Hood (born in Barnsdale), Guy Fawkes, Dick Turpin and Dracula (Bram Stoker wrote part of the vampire tale in a Whitby hotel) and, some say, the birthplace of modern civilisation began in Leeds, but you'll have to read the book to find out why. Ideal for a blowy winter night, the history begins in Jurassic Yorkshire 200,000,000BC, Britain's oldest house (8770BC), the Stonehenge of the north, St Hilda of Whitby and Caedmon the Cowherd (614); the uneducated Yorkshire lad who gave us the British Empire (1693) who was John Harrison from Wakefield, Gentleman Jack, the Luddites and what they stood for, and the Brontë connection, four exceptionally well-married daughters, a cat, a cliff and a life-saving intervention (1934), the Yorkshire accent combats Nazi propaganda, building Britain's highest motorway (1963), the Yorkshire Ripper finally caught (1981), and John Noakes gets down about Shep among the dozens of entries in this fun and readable quirky reference book. 170pp, paperback.