Yorkshire

Flag of Yorkshire

Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England. It is the largest historic county in Great Britain and has a population of over 5 million people. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after the city of York.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · Anonymous · See also · External links

A

• Being from Yorkshire is as much a state of mind as a geographical fact.
  • Liam Allen, "What's so special about Yorkshire?", BBC News (24 October 2007)

B

• It is a Yorkshire habit to say what you think with blunt frankness, and old Ben Weatherstaff was a Yorkshire moor man.
  • Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden (1911), ch. 4

C

• We just thought people in Yorkshire hated everyone else, we didn’t realise they hated each other so much.
  • David Cameron, unguarded comment in Leeds while discussing rival devolution bids — "Cameron caught on camera making 'people in Yorkshire hate each other' jibe", Press Association, The Guardian (11 September 2015)

• It is no exaggeration to say I would have died for Yorkshire. I suppose once or twice I nearly did.
  • Brian Close, quoted in Trevor Bailey (ed.), John Player Cricket Yearbook 1975 (Queen Anne Press 1975), p. 138: cited in Angela Patmore, Sportsmen under Stress (London: Stanley Paul, 1986), p. 29

• 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.
  • Jo Cox, maiden speech in the House of Commons — "Devolution and Growth Across Britain" (19 June 2015)

D

• The Duke of York so dread
  The eager vaward led.
  • Michael Drayton, To the Cambro-Britons and their Harp, his Ballad of Agincourt (1627)

F

• 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.
  • Sir Ranulph Fiennes, quoted by Bernard Ingham — "Essence of Yorkshire", Telegraph & Argus (25 October 1999)

G

• What do yer want to go to London for? It's nowt but 20 Doncasters end to end.
  • Derek Garrett's advice to his daughter Lesley, quoted by Bernard Ingham — "Essence of Yorkshire", Telegraph & Argus (25 October 1999)

H

• The rogues and vagabonds who sought refuge in the moorland that later inspired the Brontë sisters to their several masterpieces.
  • Ted Hughes, quoted by Bernard Ingham — "Essence of Yorkshire", Telegraph and Argus (25 October 1999)

I

• 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.
  • Sir Bernard Ingham — "Essence of Yorkshire", Telegraph & Argus (25 October 1999)

S

• Now is the winter of our discontent
  Made glorious summer by this sun of York.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard III (c. 1591), act 1, sc. 1 (K. Richard)

• The Earl Northumberland and the Lord Bardolph,
  With a great power of English and of Scots,
  Are by the shrieve of Yorkshire overthrown.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2 (c. 1597), act 4, sc. 4 (Harcourt)

• My living in Yorkshire was so far out of the way that it was actually twelve miles from a lemon
  • Sydney Smith, in Hesketh Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (London: The Right Book Club, 1934), p. 271

T

• 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."
  • Graham Taylor, "God's own county", The Guardian (3 June 2006)

• 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.
  • Paul Tonkinson, quoted in Sophie Heawood, "I’ve lived half my life in London, but I’ll always be a Yorkshire lass at heart", The Guardian (1 August 2015)

Anonymous

• Oh, the grand old Duke of York,
     He had ten thousand men;
  He marched them up to the top of the hill,
     And he marched them down again.
  When they were up, they were up,
     And when they were down, they were down,
  And when they were only halfway up,
     They were neither up nor down.
  • "The Grand Old Duke of York", in I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 442–443

External links

• The History of Yorkshire
• Samples of Yorkshire Dialect
• Yorkshire Inquisitions 1275–1295
• Yorkshire: historical and genealogical information at GENUKI