Regional Identities In North East England 1300 2000

Is North East England really a coherent and self-conscious region? The essays collected here address this topical issue, from the middle ages to the present day.

An examination of how regional identities are reflected in texts from medieval England.

This collection situates the North-East within a developing nationwide account of British musical culture.

How distinctive is the landscape of the North East of England? How far does its distinctive nature contribute to region's identity? These are key questions addressed by this book, drawing on hiterto little-known detail and many new research findings. --

A key duty of the Renaissance monarchy was the defence of its subjects. For the English monarchy, the rule and defence from enemies beyond the long-landed frontiers in Ireland and the English far-north proved an intractable problem. It was not, however, a duty which was accorded a high priority by successive Yorkist and early Tudor kings, nor is it an aspect of state formation which has attracted much attention from modern historians. This study assesses traditional arrangements for defending English ground, the impact of the frontier on border society, and the way in which the topography and patterns of settlement in border regions shaped the character of the march and border itself. Defending English Ground focuses on two English shires, Meath and Northumberland, in a period during which the ruling magnates of these shires who had hitherto supervised border rule and defence were mostly unavailable to the crown. Unwilling to foot the cost of large garrisons and extended fortifications, successive kings increasingly shifted the costs of defence onto the local population, prompting the border gentry and minor peers to organize themselves through county communities for the rule and defence of the region. This strategy was generally successful in Ireland where the military threat presented by 'the wild Irish' was not so formidable, but in the English far-north Tudor reform, centralized control, and the burden of defence against the Scots soon led to 'the decay of the borders'.

In reaction to the centralizing nation-building efforts of states in nineteenth-century Europe, many regions began to define their own identity. In thirteen stimulating essays, specialists analyze why regional identities became widely celebrated towards the end of that century and why some considered themselves part of the new national self-image.

In-depth examinations of the role played by liberties across the British Isles.

The Voices project of the British Broadcasting Corporation, a recent high-profile media investigation, gathered contemporary English dialect samples from all over the UK and invited contributions from the public to a dedicated website. This book explores both issues of ideology and representation behind the media project and uses to which the emerging data can be put in the study of language variation and change. Two lead-in chapters, written from the complementary perspectives of a broadcast media specialist, Simon Elmes, and an academic linguist, David Crystal, set the project in the BBC’s historical, social, and linguistic contexts. Following these, authorities in a range of specialisms concerned with uses and representations of language varieties address various aspects of the project’s potential, in three broad sections: Linguistic explorations of the representations of language and the debates on language evoked by the data. The linguistic product of the project, including lexical, phonological, and grammatical investigations. Technical aspects of creating maps from the large electronic Voices database. An interactive companion website provides the means to access, explore, and make use of raw linguistic data, along with interpretive maps created from it, all accompanied by full explanations. Analysing 21st Century British English brings together key research and is essential reading for advanced undergraduate students, postgraduate students and researchers working in the areas of language variation, dialect and sociolinguistics. Contributors: David Crystal, Bethan Davies, Susie Dent, Simon Elmes, Holly Gilbert, Jon Herring, John Holliday, Alexandra Jaffe, Tommaso Milani, Rob Penhallurick, Jonnie Robinson, Mooniq Shaikjee, Ann Thompson, Will Turner, Clive Upton, Martijn Wieling.

People from the British and Irish Isles have, for centuries, migrated to all corners of the globe.Wherever they went, the English, Irish, Scots, Welsh, and and even sub-national, supra-regional groups like the Cornish, co-mingled, blended and blurred. Yet while they gradually integrated into new lives in far-flung places, British and Irish Isle emigrants often maintained elements of their distinctive national cultures, which is an important foundation of diasporas. Within this wider context, this volume seeks to explore the nature and characteristics of the British and Irish diasporas, stressing their varying origins and evolution, the developing attachments to them, and the differences in each nation’s recognition of their own diaspora. The volume thus offers the first integrated study of the formation of diasporas from the islands of Ireland and Britain, with a particular view to scrutinizing the similarities, differences, tensions and possibilities of this approach.

Recent studies of the experiences of Irish migrants in Victorian Britain have emphasized the significance of the themes of change, continuity, resistance and accommodation in the creation of a rich and diverse migrant culture within which a variety of Irish identities co-existed and sometimes competed. In contributing to this burgeoning historiography, this book explores and analyses the complexities surrounding the self-identity of the Irish in Victorian Britain, which differed not only from place to place and from one generation to another but which were also variously shaped by issues of class and gender, and politics and religion. Moreover, and given the tendency for Irish ethnicity to mutate, through a comparative study of the Irish in Britain and the United States, the book suggests that in order to preserve their Irishness, the Irish often had to change it. Written by some of the foremost scholars in the field, these original essays not only shed new light on the history of the Irish in Britain but are also integral to the broader study of the Irish Diaspora and of immigrants and minorities in multicultural societies. This book was previously published as a special issue of Immigrants and Minorities.