Yorkshire: A lyrical history of England's greatest county

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From Winstead, near Hull, Andrew Marvell is said to be one of the 17th century’s great metaphysical poets. His best known piece of work being the poem, To His Coy Mistress. Ted Hughes (1930 – 1998) When the only link between two apparently random murders appears to be an aging Catholic priest, Caslin is thrust into a world of long-buried secrets. Drawing unwanted attention from the intelligence services, he must consider if the man he once trusted above all others is now playing by his own rules. With professional killers circling, Caslin must face uncomfortable truths about those seeking redemption. Sometimes, justice is best served from the wrong side of the law. Many authors have given their accounts of life in the Yorkshire Dales. Some have become so loved, their works have become collectors' items and much-prized social history. WR Mitchell, or Bill as many knew him, was prolific. He loved people and their stories, and spent much of his life interviewing and collecting tales which give some marvellous insights. Yorkshire represents a time gone by, captured in a fascinating collection of interviews he conducted. His Folk Tales on the Settle-Carlisle Railway remains a popular volume. You can listen to some of his interviews thanks to this archive and the work of Settle Stories . Haunted by the ghosts of the past, Caslin is pushed to his limits. Will this case break him or be his path to redemption?

Peace’s readers will note that the television series has an infinitesimally happier ending than the books do. The scriptwriter Tony Grisoni explained: “It was an emotional reaction … to two and a half years of being in this inferno that David Peace had constructed. David doesn’t save anyone. Whereas I needed to.” He wrote his first novel, 1974, purely for his own satisfaction, researching 1970s Yorkshire using the microfiched British newspapers in the Japanese public libraries; his father persuaded him to submit it for publication, and the small independent firm Serpent’s Tail published the book in 1999. Born in Barnsley and now living in Huddersfield, Joanne was a teacher for 15 years, during which time she published novels including…The real Dennis Hoban certainly deserves to be celebrated for taking the murders of sex workers more seriously than some of his colleagues and shrewdly joining the dots that suggested a serial killer was at work. But as I watched the programme I couldn’t help comparing it with another, much more unsettling, work that was also inspired by the Sutcliffe murders. As the years passed and the Ripper’s tally of victims edged upwards and began to embrace women other than sex workers – and with the police seemingly at sea – David lost his initial excitement and began to fear for his mother’s life, begging her not to leave the house. “My sister used to say her prayers out loud every night, and she would always say, ‘Dear God, please don’t let the Ripper kill my mum,’” Peace told the Guardian in 2001. “Because of the way she was, she’d have to say it 10 times. If she lost count, she’d have to start again. It did my head in.” Sheep farmer, Amanda Owen is continuing the tradition of documenting and recounting farming life in the Yorkshire Dales with The Yorkshire Shepherdess and A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess. Neil Hanson gives a completely different insight into life in the Dales with The Inn at the Top, his account of thetrials and tribulations of life as the landlord at Tan Hill, England's Highest Inn. Later on, in pursuit of the same man, another cop threatens to rape a woman he encounters so that she will stay out of the way of the arrest. There are no rebukes from an upright chief superintendent.

The melodramatic events are underpinned by Peace’s eerie evocation of the psychogeography of West Yorkshire, his characters being haunted with a sense of the area’s violent past, conjured up in his incantatory, mesmerically repetitious prose: he is a novelist who is perhaps best read out loud. Are these books modernist fiction disguised as crime thrillers, or vice versa? They are certainly unlike anything else in crime fiction.I bought Haytime in the Yorkshire Dales edited by Don Gamble & Tanya St. Pierre some time ago and still love to dip into the pictures and descriptions of our wonderful flower-rich hay meadows. It covers their biodiversity, traditional farming methods and how they’ve inspired creative people for generations.

Charlotte was the oldest of the 3 surviving sisters, she died due to complications during pregnancy at the age of 39. She wrote: After all that crime, you'll probably be ready for something a little more upbeat such as Mary Jane Baker'sromantic comedies set in the Dales - the Love in the Dales series including A Bicycle Made for Two and The Perfect Fit. Born in York, Mike Pannett is an author of novels which recount his experience as a rural beat officer in the Ryedale district of North Yorkshire. So it's wonderful to be able to bring you some excellent news. Books and bookshops are flourishing!The renowned dramatist and actor, was born in Leeds and went to Oxford and became part of the university review ‘Beyond the Fringe’, produced for the Edinburgh Festival of 1960. Alan Bennett’s play, The Madness of George III, dramatises the monarch’s real-life struggle with porphyria-induced insanity, and his treatment by, among others, Dr Francis Willis. Some say this treatment took place in Ravenscar, in the house that is now the Ravens Hall Hotel. The spot is breathtakingly beautiful. The Red Riding Quartet garnered more attention with each volume, and in 2003 Peace was named in Granta magazine’s prestigious list of the Best British Writers under 40, although he did not take part in the photo shoot: “I remember thinking, they look like a bunch of w______. They’re all London-based. They just seem a literary elite.” He has gone on to find further success with his novel about Brian Clough, The Damned Utd (filmed in 2009 with Michael Sheen) and a trilogy of offbeat crime novels set in Japan.