WHERE THERE'S MUCK, THERE'S BRAS

There are many women shaping the stories of the North of England right now like the screenwriter Sally Wainwright whose dramas Last Tango In Halifax and Happy Valley are redefining the type of roles available to northern female actors. Then of course there has been a female Dr Who and the brilliant Maxine Peake from Bolton. Cartimandua was a Northern queen, more powerful and cannier than Boadicea - what made one stay in the memory and the other disappear? Proud Northern lasses are celebrated in this comic writer's celebration of the queens of the north - warrior women, leaders, fighters, diplomats and rulers. Kate Fox takes us on a sharp and funny journey from rebels to writers, athletes to astronauts like Helen Sharman from Sheffield, the Woodbine-smoking football player Lily Parr and those who laid the ground for modern stars from Victoria Wood to Little Mix, Nicola Adams to Lubaina Himid. There is plenty of muck and bras here, Elisabeth Gaskell's North and South to Billy Elliot, the Full Monty via Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Kes, Coronation St., the working class politician Ellen Wilkinson who was instrumental in the Jarrow March, aristocrat Gertrude Bell who was the architect of modern Iraq, Sheila Fell, the Van Gogh of Cumbria and the outspoken Sunderland singer Nadine Shah. All of them hammering out their words, ideas and creations from the Northern cities, far from the centre of power. From the queen of the desert to Barbara Hepworth and plenty on the comedian's greatest heroine, the late great Victoria Wood. 291pp, paperback.