Les Dawson’s Lancashire

128 Pages·07.192 MB·English

by  Les Dawson, John Ireland

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this book is a disorderly ramble round m>
county. Liverpool, Manchester, the flat p ains
East Lancashire, Rochdale, Southport, the
Trough of Bowland, the Lune Valley-all these
and more elbow each other for your attention...
Liverpool 4 A total stranger getting off
the train at Lime Street Station might expect
most things-but never what confronts him.
This station possesses all the radiant charm that
one usually associates with a Murmansk
slaughterhouse.}
Bury 4They sold a variety of cowheel
that was a gourmet’s ticket to Valhalla, and the
tripe was a sheet of pure ecstasy.}
East Lancashire 4... is flat. If one sees the
slightest hummock, it is either a buried sofa or
the work of a mole with gout. Market gardeners
have their plots here; small stalls sell you carrots
the size of a wrestlers thigh, and cows with ’flu
muck about in watery troughs.}
St Anne’s 4 A dowager who refuses to
come to tenms with anything remotely modem,
St Anne’s is still tea dances and lavender and
swooning maidens in gazebos. Years ago, the
pier had a theatre on the end of it, where great
music hail acts performed: The Masked
Gurkhas and Winnie, underwater jugglers and
rabbit benders, Faggot Poo and his Catholic
Geese; we will never see their likes again.}
I could go on much longer. Inside
these elegant covers, I frequently do.

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LES DAWSONS

LA N C SHIRE

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LES DAWSON’S

iH CAS H IRE

ILLUSTRATIONS
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JOHN IRELAND

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Elm Tree Books, London
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First published in Great Britain 1983
by Elm Tree Books/Hamish Hamilton Ltd
Garden House, 57-59 Long Acre
London WC2E 9JZ
Copyright © Les Dawson 1983
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Dawson, Les
Les Dawson’s Lancashire
1. Lancashire - Social life and customs
I. Title
I
942.7’6’0924 DA670.L2
ISBN 0 241 11096 3
Made by Lennard Books
Mackerye End, Harpenden
Herts AL5 5DR
Editor Michael Leitch
Designed by David Pocknell’s Company Ltd
Production Reynolds Clark Associates Ltd
Printed and bound in Spain by
TONSA, San Sebastian
Foreword 7
PART ONE: A RAMBLE IN ARCADIA
Manchester to the Coast 10
Romantic Fylde 28
Blackpool to Heysham 36
Men of Lancaster 44
The Wild Country 48
Song of Bowland 50
Interlude 52
PART TWO: THE STUFF OF LEGENDS
Roots 54
A Lancashire Love Story 56
Is Lancashire the Promised Land? 59
Lancashire Heroes 63
On Lancashire Women 72
PART THREE: MADE IN LANCASHIRE
The Spirit of Industry 80
La Mode 84
Fighting Men 88
Les Tripes Lancastriennes 92
Art Sublime 97
Sporting History 100
Night Life 103
The Blackpool Landlady 109
A Final Salute 113