The Northumbrians have been overlooked by British and global history, but they’ve made astonishing contributions to both. Dan Jackson sets out to recover this lost history, exploring the deep roots of Northumbrian culture—hard work and heavy drinking, sociability and sentimentality, militarism and masculinity—through centuries of border warfare and dangerous industry. He explains what we can learn about Northumbria’s people from its landscape and architecture, and revisits the Northumbrian Enlightenment that gave the world the locomotive and the lightbulb. This story reaches right to the present day, as this extraordinary region finds itself caught between an indifferent south and an increasingly confident Scotland.

From the Venerable Bede and the prince-bishops of Durham to Viz and Geordie Shore, this vital new history reveals a part of England with an uncertain future, but whose people remain as remarkable as ever.