Dan Snow's History Hit - Geordies: A History

Episode Date: January 3, 2020

'Northumbrian patriot' Dan Jackson, who has just written a book on the history of Northeast England and its people, comes on the podcast to talk about his native Northumberland.

Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Hope 2020 is treating you well so far. Thank you everyone for the feedback on the 2019 pod, glad you're enjoying it. Record numbers of people listening to that. And thank you all for your support. Some of you have even heeded my plea and gone and given us a five-star rating on iTunes and all that kind of nonsense, which is very much appreciated. It's a pain in the arse for you, but's much appreciated by me so thank you very much. Over Christmas and New Year we've had some

of the big ticket subjects on the podcast. We've had the Tudors, we've had the SAS, we've had a Crusader battle. But now for something a little more niche. It is a history of the Geordies. For people outside the UK this will not immediately mean a huge amount to you but the Geordies is a nickname, it's a description of the people who live in the northeast of England. For people outside the UK this will not immediately mean a huge amount to you, but the Geordies is a nickname, a description of the people who live in the North East of England, sandwiched if you like, between Yorkshire and Scotland. One of the remarkable things about living on this funny little island of mine is the diversity of cultures, of accents, of languages, of traditions, of histories.

You can travel 20 or 30 miles and find yourself in a completely different part of the country where they regard the place you've just come from as a distant and foreign land. And that's certainly true of Northumbria. Dan Jackson made a name for himself, well, from various places, but named for himself on Twitter for years.

He's been tweeting out Geordie history. Every time I was abroad on some distant battlefield or historic site, he'd find some connection to the northeast of England and always tweet at me. And I'm very glad to say he's now turned that gigantic encyclopedic knowledge into a book. It's been a runaway success, an unpredictable bestseller of 2019, and it absolutely deserves to be so. He has written a history of that remarkable part of the world and the people that live there. This interview is filmed.

You can watch me and Dan Jackson chat, or you will be able to soon, on History Hit TV. It is a digital history channel. And I think I might just recommend you get a subscription to that channel. For incredibly small amounts of money, you get access to a kind of Netflix for history, history documentaries, more than you could ever watch, more than you could ever need. access to a kind of Netflix for history, history documentaries, more than you could ever watch, more than you could ever need. And you can do so at the moment with our crazy January sale. Crazy. I'm out of the country at the moment. If I was in the country, trust me, I'd bring this to a close because it's killing me. If you use the code January when you check out, I won't attempt to

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and one pen can change the world. Dan Jackson, thanks for coming on the pod. Pleasure, thanks for having me. Twitter phenomenon. You are one of those amazing examples though

of where everyone's having a bit of a negativity sort of phase at the moment about social media things but you are somebody who has established yourself, built a following, and are this like completely unique voice that had it not been for social media might not have been allowed to flourish. Yeah, I think

that's a good point. Yeah, I've had nothing but positive experiences with social media really, and it's an outlet to get all this pointless trivia that I've collected out there. You say pointless trivia, but you don't mean that, come on. I've never met a regional, is what's the word for a regional patriot? Yes, well I'm happy to be called a Northumbrian, that works, but yeah a regional patriot, definitely. But you tend to notice these things when you come from provincial parts of the country, you think well we had the first whatever, you know, we invented x, y and z, so we hang on to that sort of stuff. Well in the case of Northumbria, invented nearly everything. We've got a decent track record, Y, and Z. So we hang on to that sort of stuff. Well, in the case of Northumbria, invented nearly everything.

We've got a decent track record. That's for sure. And so you wrote a book on the history of the Northeast and its people. Did that book follow your success? I mean, have you always wanted to do this? Or did your experiences online encourage you that there would be an audience out there?

Yes, definitely. And in fact, there would be an audience out there? Yes, definitely. And in fact, probably the stuff I put out there on social media led to being approached by a publisher to say, do you fancy writing a book? And I didn't think about it too hard before I said, yeah, yeah, certainly. Because I think there's an interesting story to tell about the history of the North East, which for better or worse, there are some stereotypes about it that are well known by the rest of the country it's quite a recognizable part of england and its recognizability and some of the stereotypes attached to the northeast which are largely built on fact in my in my opinion

uh i think you can explain them but through reference to the deep past and that's what the book's all about the deep past where of that's what the book's all about. The deep past where, of course, Northumbria was England. Discuss! I mean, if it hadn't been for Eddie Guthrum's great army, the capital might well have been in the North East. That's right. Well, Northumbria is older than England, isn't it? And you could argue it was the first united kingdom

between Benicia and Dera. So it is a fascinating story. And there's that sense of loss that hangs over the North East, or Northumbria, I should say, having once been a kingdom. Do you think, is that right? Having a dignity about it, of being this lost kingdom, that people kind of look back slightly wistfully towards that golden age. But there was a golden age in the so-called Dark Ages,

but there was also a kind of second golden age in the Industrial Revolution period. And people in the 19thcalled Dark Ages, but there was also a kind of second Golden Age in the Industrial Revolution period and people in the 19th century did make the connection between the enlightenment of Bede and Cuthbert and all those sorts of people and the extraordinary inventiveness that was taking place in the North East in the 19th century with the light bulb and the locomotive and all that sort of stuff. Is Northumbria our Texas? You know, do you pledge allegiance to the flag

of the American Republic, but also to the flag of Texas every morning? I think there is, it's been complicated slightly by the intra-rivalries within Northumbria, as I define Northumbria between the River Tweed and the River Tees. Oh, you don't go to the Humber? Not really, no. I think I've drawn it quite tightly in terms of what was called in the 11th century a land between the brine and the high ground, between the North Sea, the Pennines, the Cheviots and the fresh stream water, which they added as well,

which is the Tweed and the Tees. So it's an unusually well-drawn region of England. It's got some real topographical boundaries to it, but within that there are some pretty intense local rivalries exacerbated by things like football, I have to say, but that can kind of obscure what I think are some commonalities, some rich commonalities across that whole geography. Well, let's talk about where do you trace those commonalities come from? I mean, presumably there is huge political diversity before the Romans arrived. So are you able to trace that? Or is it this distinctive Northumbria that emerges following the Roman departure from Britain?

Where's your sort of start point? I think it's certainly, in my, the way I've written this history, it starts with the Roman Wall in terms of defining the northeast of England as a militarized frontier. And that sense of the northeast of England being a dangerous place to live, a borderland, for centuries has shaped the culture of the place. And it's often the case, if you look in other parts of the world you know where borderlands the balkans you know other places like that where the culture is similar borderlands have that thing and certainly when when the romans you know built their extraordinary wall there setting up the northeast

as this frontier zone and then as a kind of buffer zone but in the wars between england and scotland you know the northeast of england was in the words of one historian, the ring in which the champions met. It was the sort of cockpit. That's where England and Scotland collided time after time. And, you know, swords were beaten into plough shares in the rest of the country much earlier than they were in the North East. So the sense of danger led to a certain communalism in the North East and a sense of sticking together, huddling together for warmth and safety was a prudent thing to do and that transferred quite neatly actually into the industrial period when the north-east was home to two of the most dangerous professions anywhere in the world which are coal mining and seafaring. So the sense of danger I think and violence and

sudden death has been a constant in north Northeastern history for a long time. And that coast is pretty harsh, you know, it's not like the south coast with its big natural harbours. As a sailor, that coast fills me with dread. Yes, it's fairly dramatic, isn't it? And with the backdrop of things like Bamburg Castle, it adds to this sense of kind of scenic drama everywhere you turn. Tynemouth Castle is an extraordinary thing as well, on the headland overlooking the Tyne,

where Tostig was based, and all those sort of famous people in history. Let's go back. The older I get, the more fascinated I am with early medieval history, what used to be called the Dark Ages, because that strikes me as the period when the political, the demographic,

the religious shape of this archipelago really took its, sort of recognised me in modern form, if you like. Yeah. Talk to me about what happened in the northeast after the Romans left. Well you've got these emerging kingdoms haven't you? You've got the Benician and Deiran kingdoms who eventually coalesce as I said earlier into forming what some people describe as the first united kingdom in these islands and then that ushered in that sense of a glorious golden age with the likes of Bede and Cuthbert and the kind of northern saints. The history of Christianity was really important

and led to some extraordinary achievements. Bede's history of the English, of course, is a standout. But also, you know, the first stained glass is made in the northeast of England around this time. You've got the biggest library in Europe at Wearmouth Jarrow. You've got the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Codex Amiatinus, that huge door-stopping Bible that's in Rome at the moment. So the stuff they produced was extraordinary. The political structures were fairly volatile. I think the longest reign of any king at the time

is getting into the low two figures because of the violence that pervaded that society. And it didn't last. You start to get the influx from across the North Sea, another influx after the Anglo-Saxons had arrived, of course, from the 5th century onwards. But the sense of Viking raids is a big part of the story but it's often misunderstood because

the place I'm particularly interested in between the Tweed and the Tees was raided by the Vikings certainly but was not settled really you notice all those Scandinavian place names just stop at the Tees you know the BY ending places Whitby and Selby and Grimsby and all that sort of stuff You notice all those Scandinavian place names just stop at the T's. You know, the B-Y ending places, Whitby and Selby and Grimsby and all that sort of stuff.

And the Thorpes and the Thwaites, they stop at the T's. You know, north of the T's, it's Anglo-Saxon names that you see more often, or the Wirth ending places, you know, just near where I live, Backworth and Killingworth and Heworth. The Anglo-Saxons kind of hung on. There were some puppet rulers installed over them by the Vikings from the, you know, in the Danelaw period, but it wasn't really settled. And I think a lot of people in the North East assume that what distinctiveness there is, is because we're all Vikings. But actually, that's not quite the case. It's more that the Anglo-Saxon stuff held on in the northeast a bit longer it always reminds me of the you know the village in uh asterix you know just

the corner of america you know hanging on against this onslaught and as the english and scotland scottish kingdoms kind of coalesced after that period inevitably this buffer zone was much fought over and that border wasn't settled for a long time. Well, speaking of not being settled, I think one of the great moments of the history of these islands is the Battle of Nectonsmere, when the Northumbrian army marches north, and conceivably you'd see a whole of what is now southern Scotland

incorporated into the Northumbrian kingdom, but they're catastrophically defeated in the highlands. Yes. I mean, that's got to be one of the great turning points of British military history. Yeah, completely. The sense of that border fluctuating is a big part of the story.

But then you've got the Battle of Carrham, 1018, you know, when the Scots defeat the Northumbrians. I didn't know that. No, go on, tell me about that. Just on the River Tweed, which more or less sets the English, Anglo-Scottish border on the Tweed in 1018. There was a big thousand year anniversary

commemoration just last year. I miss, how did I miss that? Yeah, it was a big deal at the time and it sets that border on the Tweed basically. And, you know, you had Norham Castle and you've got that sense of the borderland in the medieval period. I talk about it in the book and I say, you know, places like Reedsdale were like the Hellman province of medieval Britain, really, you know, just ridiculously violent. And now, appropriately enough, it's at MOD firing range up there now. So that continuity of the martial history of the Northeast is really interesting, I think. land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows

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by History Hit. There are new episodes every week. So then we, you move through all that kind of Anglo-Scottish stuff, as you sort of say. Let's talk about the,

skip forward to the Industrial Revolution. What, was it the availability of raw materials? Why did the North East enjoy this kind of

explosion of creativity and productivity in that period? It's all about the natural resources. It's what's been called carboniferous capitalism. The North East of England controlled for a long time the most important commodity in the world, which is coal, the black stuff, the black diamonds. And it was relatively, the pits start within the 17th and 18th centuries. The coal was pretty shallow. It was near rivers. So you didn't have to build complicated canals to get,

you just rolled it down the hill out of the River Tyne. And particularly the Tyne to the Thames trade was so vital. I mean, London's called the Big Smoke because of Northumberland and Durham coal that the place relied on. So the sense of coal being a vital source of power, and without power, the Industrial Revolution couldn't have got going. I think by 1750 there's about two million tonnes of coal being dug out from the great northern coal field, and people have calculated that that corresponds to about the equivalent of having two million acres of woodland in terms of fuel power.

You know, an area twice the size of Kent of woodland every year was now available as a source of fuel power. So it was extraordinary. And on the back of that, you know, Newcastle becomes the sort of Dallas or Dubai of the 18th century. The coal trade gives us people like Captain Cook, the nursery of the Navy, Cuthbert Collingwood. So there's extraordinary developments on the back of coal mining.

They argue that the first industrial society was in the Derwent Valley, which is a tributary of the time, where all the nails and ironwork was made by Sir Ambrose Crowley. His extraordinary industrial plant that was established in the late 17th century without which the wooden walls of the Royal Navy wouldn't have held together. It was all the metal work was made there, even the shackles for the slave trade as well.

It's a grim point to note. So it's extraordinary inventiveness developing on the back of the coal trade, which had spin-offs in the fact that, and this is not as well known, that Newcastle was the capital of a region that was probably the most literate part of provincial England in the 18th century, partly because of the proximity to Scotland, and Scotland had a parish schooling system earlier than England,

and the North East sort of copied that. But the demand for literate individuals, because the economy was so dynamic, led to the fact that most provincial towns in that period had about one or two max local newspapers. Newcastle had 10 in the 18th century. It was the fourth, it was the biggest centre of printing and publication outside London, Oxford and Cambridge in England,

which isn't widely known either. But it just speaks to extraordinary vibrancy of that culture and the wealth on the back of coal mining and exploration which was transformative really and listen I don't want to get us both Tired and feathered because whenever but we got to go there we got to talk about the railway Yeah, and whenever talk about the railway someone tries to firebomb your house Yes, give me the Northeast's pitch for why you guys not the west midlands or the the west country invented the railway well of course the the locomotive technology gets

underway pretty early in the 18th century doesn't it but uh you've got to look to george stevenson another extraordinary figure, self-taught. He was illiterate until his late teens. He had worked as a coal miner, but he was part of that generation of intensely practical men. I took him to the book about the Northumbrian Enlightenment, gave us these extraordinary figures like Stevenson. Where Stevenson's genius lay was he was a tinkerer. He was a perfecter of other technologies. And it was his development of the locomotive that won the Rainhill Trials in 1829. You know, the technology already existed, and there were plenty of other locomotive builders in the North East. But it was Stevenson's

engineering nous that produced something reliable, that worked much more effectively than his competitors. So as you know, the first passenger railway in Stockton and Darling, he wins the Rainhill Trials. His son, Robert, who, you know, his extraordinary civil engineering achievements, they've said that, you know, the Killsby Tunnels outside Birmingham were the greatest feat of civil engineering since the Great Pyramids were built.

Father and son team, they were brilliant. They were brilliant minds. So you can argue about who was the first to invent the idea of a moving locomotive engine. But, you know, they had what were called the Newcastle Roads, the wooden railways that was allowing us to kind of get coal down to the River Tyne and the River Weir pretty easily. I've been down some. You can still go down some.

Yeah, yeah. They discovered them recently. And it's four feet. I've been down some. You can still go down some. Yeah, yeah. They discovered them recently. And it's four feet. I forget the exact dimensions, but it's Stevenson's gauge that is used all around the world. So he perfected some existing technology, but he did it amazingly well. And then you've got Captain Cook

is another self-taught, remarkable man. So there was something... Was there something in Northumbrian society that perhaps was less shut to people from different backgrounds? Was it, as you say, it was like a Dubai, was it a gold rush? Was it money talked? Perhaps it was less class bound? Yes, definitely. In that period in particular, you know, talent just rose to the top pretty, pretty easily, I think, because there was money to be made. There was a demand for intelligent individuals because particularly coal mining and engineering, you can't bluff your way in.

You know, you need to be intensely practical and intelligent and highly skilled. So anyone who had those skills could rise to the top. I mean, the Stephensons are a great example, but there are others like lesser known figures like Sir George Elliot, you know, who had been a coal miner as well, but ended up owning the company that made the first transatlantic cable in the 1850s. You've got people like Joseph Swan emerging who invent the light bulb in the 1850s as well. They were always searching for more efficient ways to get the coal out of the ground. And, you know, after the 1810s and 20s, where they penetrated this thick layer of magnesium stone

many fathoms underground, which they thought was impossible, that gave them access to even greater riches of coal mining, which we can be proud of now. But the downside of that was it released the genie of carbon, didn't it, into the world, which we're be proud of now. But the downside of that was it released the genie of carbon, didn't it, into the world, which we're all dealing with right now. Presumably you're like, you know, the king of historians now in the Northeast. I mean, do you find it's a place where people are connected with that history, where it matters to people?

Yes. It's funny how people who approach me after I've written the book and go, you know, I love stuff like this, you know. They're almost embarrassed about it, you know. I get that. I quite like your programmes. I'm like, well, I mean, thanks for telling me. Yeah, well, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you be interested in where you come from or the story? It's the story of you.

You know, why wouldn't you be interested in this stuff? So there's definitely been a real audience for something that tries to explain why we are the way we are, I think, in the North East. Because there are some stereotypes attached to the North East of England which are recognisable in the rest of the country, as I mentioned earlier. Some of the macho culture, the slightly hedonistic culture as well in the North East, which is well known, which was the spin-off from working in extremely hard and dangerous professions, but they were well remunerated, which meant that guess what these well-paid working men and women wanted to do at the weekend? They wanted to go out drinking heavily, frankly.

And that's shaped Northeastern culture for centuries, I have to say. Well, it's a culture for it. Thank you so much coming on on the podcast my pleasure amazing that's uh the book is called it's called the northumbrians uh the northeast of england and its people and new history and and just for you personally uh what what does the future hold do you think i mean is this are you on to something here well this is the book i wanted to write and i've been thinking about for a long time. So I haven't got anything immediately on the boil, but there are some interesting individuals that I might explore next that emerged from this work.

I mean, I know you're a big fan of the 18th century Royal Navy, Dan, and Cuthbert Collingwood is an extraordinary individual. His memorial in the Cathedral in Newcastle describes him as a pious, just and exemplary man. And we all know in the North East that he really won the Battle of Trafalgar, didn't he? But he was first into action. He was. You can't say that much for him. Yes, and Nelson was killed, what, an hour into it?

That's right. So that might be an avenue to explore his life, because he fits into that Northumbrian Enlightenment tradition as well. So, yeah, possibly. Well, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. That was awesome. Thank you, Dan. that might be an avenue to explore his life because he fits into that Northumbrian enlightenment tradition as well. So yeah, possibly. Well, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

That was awesome. Thank you, Dan. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished and liquidated.

One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world. He tells us what is possible, not just in the pages of history books, but in our own lives as well. I have faith in you. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money.

Makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, that law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get.

So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.