Geography Of The United Kingdom

"With Wordsworth, the mountains of Cumberland passed into World Literature, became, like the music of Beethoven and the paintings of Turner, symbols of the power, the vitality, the force of nature and super-nature which haunted and compelled the imagination of the nineteenth century."

"We have clambered up to the top of Skiddaw, & I have waded up the bed of Lodore. In fine I have satisfied myself, that there is such a thing as that, which tourists call romantic, which I very much suspected before."

"The whole view is entirely of the horrid kind. Not a tree appeared to add the least chearfulness to it. With regard to the adorning of such a scene with figures, nothing could suit it better than a group of banditti. Of all the scenes I ever saw, this was the most adapted to the perpetration of some dreadful deed."

"The Lake country is a glorious region, of which I had only seen the similitude in dreams, waking or sleeping…I longed to slip out unseen, and to run away by myself in amongst the hills and dales."

"The full perfection of Keswick consists of three circumstances, beauty, horror, and immensity united…But to give you a complete idea of these three perfections, as they are joined in Keswick, would require the united powers of Claude, Salvator, and Poussin. The first should throw his delicate sunshine over the cultivated vales, the scattered cots, the groves, the lake, and wooded islands. The second should dash out the horror of the rugged cliffs, the steeps, the hanging woods, and foaming waterfalls; while the grand pencil of Poussin should crown the whole with the majesty of the impending mountains."

"Skiddaw shews its vast base, and bounding all that part of the vale, rises gently to a height that sinks the neighboring hills; opens a pleasing front, smooth and verdant, smiling over the country like a gentle generous lord, while the fells of Borrowdale frown on it like a hardened tyrant."

"Right before me is a great camp of single mountains – each in shape resembles a Giant's Tent; and to the left, but closer to it far than the Bassenthwaite Water to my right, is the lake of Keswick, with its islands and white sails, and glossy lights of evening – crowned with green meadows. But the three remaining sides are encircled by the most fantastic mountains, that ever earthquakes made in sport; as fantastic, as if Nature had laughed herself into the convulsion, in which they were made."

"Nor were these hills high and formidable only, but they had a kind of an unhospitable terror in them. Here were no rich pleasant valleys between them, as among the Alps; no lead mines and veins of rich oar, as in the Peak; no coal pits, as in the hills about Hallifax, much less gold, as in the Andes, but all barren and wild, of no use or advantage either to man or beast…Here we entred Westmoreland, a country eminent only for being the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England, or even in Wales it self."

"It was customary, I am told, to dash by [the Lakes] with an exclamation or two of "Oh, how fine!" &c. – or as a gentleman said to Robin Partridge the day after we were upon Windermere, "Good God! how delightful! – how charming! – I could live here for ever! – Row on, row on, row on, row on;" and, after passing one hour of exclamations upon the Lake, and half an hour at Ambleside, he ordered his horses into his phaeton, and flew off to take (I doubt not) an equally flying view of Derwentwater."

"I rode over to Lorton, a little village at the foot of a high mountain. Many came from a considerable distance, and I believe did not repent of their labour; for they found God to be a God both of the hills and valleys, and no where more present than in the mountains of Cumberland."

"Know, too, that when a pilgrim strays, In morning mist or evening maze, Along the mountain lone, That fairy fortress often mocks His gaze upon the castled rocks Of the Valley of Saint John."

"Here is Skiddaw and then, between thickets and parks, the delightful Lake Windermere, which I drew on an evening so sweet and peaceful that I felt uneasy with happiness; the sunset was combing the curly wavelets with a golden comb, and here the pilgrim sat by the quiet reeds and had no desire to go home again, so dazing and peaceful was the water."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Yorkshire folk are not fools."

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

"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.""

"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."

"The Battle of Cable Street is, excluding events connected to the Royal family and world wars, the most remembered day in twentieth century Britain. This article explores how the memory of 4 October 1936 was contested initially by contemporaries and then by subsequent generations in attempts to make it a 'usable past'. The pattern of remembering has been uneven, with periods of intense interest and then decline, but the 'Battle' has now gained mythical status and is represented in a wide range of artistic and cultural forms. The major argument of this article, following the general approach of Jonathan Boyarin, is that the processes of remembering and forgetting the 'Battle' are inseparable and cannot be seen as simple opposites. Indeed, as the century comes to a close there is a danger that the increasing commemoration of 4 October 1936 will be at the expense of remembering the specific events of the day itself."

"You are not to suppose, gentle reader, that the population of Ratcliffe is destitute of an admixture of the fairer portion of the creation. Jack has his Jill in St. George's Street, Cable Street, Back Lane, and the Commercial Road. Jill is inclined to corpulence; if it were not libellous, I could hint a suspicion that Jill is not unaddicted to the use of spirituous liquors. Jill wears a silk handkerchief round her neck, as Jack does; like him, too, she rolls, occasionally; I believe, smokes, frequently; I am afraid, swears, occasionally. Jack is a cosmopolite -here to-day, gone to-morrow; but Jill is peculiar to maritime London. She nails her colours to the mast of Ratcliffe. Jill has her good points, though she does scold a little, and fight a little, and drink a little. She is just what Mr. Thomas Dibdin has depicted her, and nothing more or less. She takes care of Jack's tobacco-box ; his trousers she washes, and. his grog, too, she makes; and if he enacts occasionally the part of a maritime Giovanni, promising to walk in the Mall with Susan of Deptford, and likewise with Sal, she only upbraids him with a tear. I wish the words of all songs had as much sense and as much truth in them as Mr. Dibdin's have."