I am delighted to announce the publication of my book Borderlands: Exploring The Yorkshire/Lancashire Boundary. 

  BORDERLANDS:

EXPLORING

THE YORKSHIRE/LANCASHIRE BOUNDARY

By Simon Zonenblick


The book, describing my journeys and encounters in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of county boundary changes, is priced at £14.50 for physical copies, or £6.50 for ebook/Word doc version.  
It contains full colour photographs and many interviews and quotes. I will be selling copies at Sowerby Bridge's Foundry St Community Centre on 14th Dec, and at a special reading at Todmorden Library, 15th Dec, both 2pm, both free entry.

Back cover:

BORDERLANDS: EXPLORING THE YORKSHIRE / LANCASHIRE BOUNDARY

By Simon Zonenblick

 

When Yorkshire born poet and nature writer Simon Zonenblick moved to Sowerby Bridge in 2012, he found himself not only exploring the dramatic countryside of the Calder Valley, but also, bit by bit, edging across the border into Lancashire, where he enjoyed visiting many towns and villages of that county, some for the first time. A decade or so later, in the run-up to the fiftieth anniversary of controversial county boundary changes, he delved more deeply into the communities and countryside along the boundary of the two counties.

In Borderlands, appropriately split into fifty chapters, Simon takes us on a cross-county wander between historic towns and landmarks, learning how some places have been in each county at different times - with a few still claimed by both!

Our wanders along these official, and unofficial, borderlands, will take us through spectacular scenery, popular towns, and roads less travelled. We’ll visit libraries, churches, markets and museums, climb to the clouds, and head deep underground. We will encounter clogs and cotton, castles, caves and old coalfields, hills and dales, moors and mountains, rubbing shoulders with walkers, witches and mythical imps, encountering gods and goddesses, Buddhas and Brigantes, and even enjoying a behind-the-scenes tour of Burnley FC. In between, we will see the inside of a stately home, hear of significant, and scandalous, events, reach for the stars, and discover the lesser known Lancastrian legacy of the Brontës. We will meet a cast of characters from the famous to the infamous - from villainous vicars and rabble-rousing Reverends to Nobel Prize winning physicists, mill workers to mill owners, gun-toting gardeners to politicians, poets, artists, comedians and singers. And we will hear from historians, writers, and other knowledgeable people, about some of the things which have, over the years, divided, and united, these two great English counties.


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