Thinking Northern Textures of Identity in the North of England -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on Contributors -- Introduction: Northern England and the Spaces of Identity -- CHAPTER I INFRASTRUCTURES OF IDENTITY -- Re-thinking Northern Politics? Northern England and Devolution -- Dialect and Regional Identity in Northern England -- CHAPTER II POLITICS OF THE IMAGINATION -- The 'North' of 'England': A Paradox? -- "Such girls as you would hardly see anywhere else in England… ":the 'regional feminine' of Mary Linskill's fiction -- Diamonds or Beasts? Re-mapping English Conceptions of Northernness in the Late Victorian Periodical -- Northern Racism: A Pilot Study of Racism in Sunderland -- CHAPTER III LANDSCAPING -- Manchester and the "Hypocritical Plan": Architecture, Shopping and Identity in the Industrial City -- The New Livercool: History, Culture and Identity on Merseyside -- The Lake District and Yorkshire Dales: Refuges from the Real World? -- Beyond the Industrial Revolution: the Transformation of Britain's Canals and their Cultural Meaning -- Speed, Steam and Nostalgia: The Heritage Railways of Northern England -- CHAPTER IV MEDIASCAPES -- Constructing an Emblematic Northern Space under Thatcherism: The New Brighton Photographs of Martin Parr and Tom Wood -- Of Popular Spaces: Northern Heterotopias, Morrissey and the Manchester Britpop Scene -- Between L.S. Lowry and Coronation Street: Salford Cultural Identities -- Classy Northerners: Class, Space and the Wonderful Illusion -- APPENDIX -- Northern England in Facts and Figures -- Index.