Les Dawson’s Lancashire PDF
Preview Les Dawson’s Lancashire
C=>» i 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. 1 LES DAWSONS LA N C SHIRE •O -J: *..#■* '' 1 . LES DAWSON’S iH CAS H IRE ILLUSTRATIONS BY - JOHN IRELAND 3• i i r- c . -------- : - ' Elm Tree Books, London = = * ! i 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
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