Yorkshire

"Several years ago, when I earned my crust as a policeman, I was chasing a gang of deer poachers across the North Yorkshire moors at dawn as the sun rose from the sea. Just as the diamond tip broke over the hill, the old bobby with me stopped and looked down to the valleys that stretched into the distance. "Look," he said, as if he had seen something for the first time. "God's kingdom, Adam's land - no finer place will you ever find."

"I would have died for Yorkshire. I suppose once or twice I nearly did."

"If the Scots can have independence, then in terms of being a viable unit Yorkshire can too. It's larger, it has more population, it has every asset you could need. If we are playing that narrow game, Yorkshire is entitled to independence and its own Parliament. But is that what we want today? It's playing into the hands of those people who want to break up the United Kingdom and let Europe rule the various parts.""

"My living in Yorkshire was so far out of the way, that it was eleven miles away from a lemon"

"What do yer want to go to London for? It's nowt but 20 Doncasters end to end."

"It is a Yorkshire habit to say what you think with blunt frankness, and old Ben Weatherstaff was a Yorkshire moor man.""

"People from Yorkshire are very proud of their underachievement. You see these old fellas in the pub going: 'I've had a great life, me. Gone nowhere. Done fuck all. Aye."

"Being from Yorkshire is as much a state of mind as a geographical fact."

"We just thought people in Yorkshire hated everyone else, we didn’t realise they hated each other so much."

"Yorkshire folk are not fools."

"Many businesses in Yorkshire want the security and stability of Britain’s continued membership of the European Union, a cause I look forward to championing passionately in this place and elsewhere."

"I am Batley and Spen born and bred, and I could not be prouder of that. I am proud that I was made in Yorkshire and I am proud of the things we make in Yorkshire. Britain should be proud of that, too."

"Once bitten twice shy, and several times bitten, then you make a rule about it. People from Yorkshire, we have found, are dour and nurse a grudge. One thing you can't put up with on expeditions are people who search for trouble, then nurse it when they have found it."

"The rogues and vagabonds who sought refuge in the moorland that later inspired the Brontë sisters to their several masterpieces."