Any native of Yorkshire writing a book about that county would not begin by slagging off Lancashire. They would just ignore the place altogether. But the introduction to this book is mainly devoted to comparing Yorkshire unfavourably with Lancashire. Charles Nevin's mission is to rescue Lancashire from "the smothering gloom that has fallen upon it from over there" - by which he means from the "sad and surly people" of Yorkshire. Lancashire, he argues, has a unique "lightness and whimsy", something to do with the Celtic influence or, as Walter Greenwood had it, the county's exposure to a wind "born in the tumbling wastes of the Atlantic".
I wonder whether it ever crossed Nevin's mind, as he set out this position, that a native of Yorkshire might end up reviewing his book. Speaking as a man born in York, I find myself almost honour bound not to be entirely favourable, so I will say that Nevin's attempt to "explore the source, the spring of this whimsy" is a bit random and full of dead ends. But in the next breath, I must concede that this is half the book's charm.
In his first chapter, Nevin visits Blackpool in the rain, where he fails to find any support at all for the idea that Lancashire women die of love - a notion first propounded by Balzac. However, he does begin to develop a related theme concerning the abstracted dreaminess of Lancastrian men. This quality is exemplified by George Formby who, Nevin tells us, was once offered salmon at the Ritz, whereupon he replied: "All right, if you're opening a tin." Nevin is always telling anecdotes you can't get out of your head. Harry Corbett kept Sooty in a box with air holes; the dancer Lionel Blair had a dog named Eric in tribute to Eric Blair (aka George Orwell); the annual production of Fisherman's Friend lozenges (made in Fleetwood, north of Blackpool) would "go around the world five times".
The glory of this book lies in its digressions - and it is almost all digressions - often concerning Nevin's origins (born in Liverpool, raised in St Helens, now living in Somerset) or his career, the highlight of which, he says, was when he "picked four out of six winners at Newton Abbot the only time I filled in as 'Mercury' of the Liverpool Daily Post". The joke is that Nevin plays the bumbling hack, while constantly undercutting that persona with the acuity of his wit and insight.
But let's return to his nominal themes. Nevin writes warmly of Liverpool, asking: "What has enhanced more lives, do you think, Scouse wit or Yorkshire people doing that 'I speak as I find' thing?" He answers this by citing a sample of Scouse graffiti, appended to a tombstone inscription: "PS: I'm dead." Nevin's suggestion that King Arthur and his knights came from Lancashire doesn't get much beyond an inquiry of a librarian in Ince (next to Wigan) who, after consulting her colleagues, replies: "It doesn't seem to ring any bells with anybody." He gets a bit further with the argument that Shakespeare lived at Hoghton in Lancs. There is apparently a whole local industry in support of this claim, and I became both quite convinced and not that bothered either way.
My favourite chapter was the one on Laurel and Hardy. Stan Laurel was born in Ulverston, now in Cumbria but once Lancs. Nevin describes Ulverston as "a Stan kind of town", meaning gentle and watery: "I think it's got something to do with being next to Morecambe Bay, which is a strange place, believe me, sometimes one thing, sometimes the other: sea, sand, land, water, depending on the tide, depending on the moon." Apparently, Laurel would write sketches for himself and Oliver Hardy long after the latter had died. He also examines in detail the somewhat eccentric theory that Laurel was the father of Clint Eastwood.
There are many, lovely luminous bits of writing. Nevin meets an old chap who, "as with many octogenarians, wore his trousers up to his neck". Cheshire is described as "that posh lost Home County". A picture of Lancashire as a distinct, dreamy entity does emerge, and I only hope that this gem of a book doesn't disappear behind banks of Dan Brown, Harry Potter and other symptoms of our new, frightening homogeneity.
Andrew Martin's latest novel is The Blackpool Highflyer (Faber & Faber)
