Yorkshire: A lyrical history of England's greatest county

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Artist Ian Scott Massie has collected a series of tales and folklore and illustrated them with his beautiful and distinctive style for Tales of the Dales.Colin Speakman also gathers together local stories into Legends of the Yorkshire Dales. The first English poet was a Yorkshire local. The now ruined Whitby Abbey was established in 657 by Abbess Hilda. From about 670AD it was the home of Caedmon, an Anglo-Saxon herdsman and the first English poet. Caedmon put into English passages from the Scriptures, and wrote the devotional Hymn to Creation. Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678) Later on, in pursuit of the same man, another cop threatens to rape a woman he encounters so that she will stay out of the way of the arrest. There are no rebukes from an upright chief superintendent. David Peace knows it was impossible to avoid hearing the word “Ripper” being shouted or whispered in West Yorkshire at that time: he was there. Peace was born in 1967 and grew up in Ossett, near Dewsbury.

Many authors have given their accounts of life in the Yorkshire Dales. Some have become so loved, their works have become collectors' items and much-prized social history. WR Mitchell, or Bill as many knew him, was prolific. He loved people and their stories, and spent much of his life interviewing and collecting tales which give some marvellous insights. Yorkshire represents a time gone by, captured in a fascinating collection of interviews he conducted. His Folk Tales on the Settle-Carlisle Railway remains a popular volume. You can listen to some of his interviews thanks to this archive and the work of Settle Stories .

York & North Yorkshire Books

Emily only had one novel published before her death at the age of 30 from tuberculosis. Her last words were “If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now”. She wrote… During the thirty years he spent in Hull, Larkin produced a significant body of poetry. In 2003, almost two decades after his death and despite controversy about his personal life and opinions, Larkin was chosen as “the nation’s best-loved poet” in a survey by the Poetry Book Society, and in 2008 The Times named Larkin as the greatest British post-war writer. Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963) After all that crime, you'll probably be ready for something a little more upbeat such as Mary Jane Baker'sromantic comedies set in the Dales - the Love in the Dales series including A Bicycle Made for Two and The Perfect Fit. Join us in our poet’s corner, as we uncover a stellar line-up of Yorkshire’s best writers of verse. Caedmon (657 – 684)

The Yorkshire Dales are peaceful and fairly crime-free and yet the area has somehow inspired a myriad of crime-writers. Susan Parry lives in Swaledale which she uses as her setting for her series of mysteries, peppered with local details such as details of lead-mining in the past. Born in Mytholmroyd, near Hebden Bridge, he lived in Yorkshire until 1937. He wrote a number of poems about his early life in the area. Hughes, consistently described as one of the 20th century’s greatest English poets, was also a prolific children’s author and translator. He was married to the poet Sylvia Plath and became Poet Laureate in 1984. W H Auden (1907 – 1973) The real Dennis Hoban certainly deserves to be celebrated for taking the murders of sex workers more seriously than some of his colleagues and shrewdly joining the dots that suggested a serial killer was at work. But as I watched the programme I couldn’t help comparing it with another, much more unsettling, work that was also inspired by the Sutcliffe murders.

Frequently asked questions

An abandoned car and a desperate call to the police lead Caslin into the heart of two families where secrets and lies are a way of life. What links the fate of an MP's granddaughter and that of a recovering drug addict working in the sex trade? A poet, translator and playwright from Beeston in Leeds, Tony Harrison adapted the well known English Medieval Mystery Plays, performed in York and Wakefield. He has also penned many poems and drama for film and television. Simon Armitage (1963 – ) I wonder if there's something about the area around Settle and the Three Peaks because it's also inspired another thriller, The Penyghent Blood by Roger Ratcliffe.