Novel places - England's Northwest

Cheshire, Cumbria, Lancashire, Manchester and Merseyside are all richly steeped in culture and transfer with ease to the author’s page. Helen Forrester’s Merseyside comes to life in her novels and Annie Groves’ Ellie Pride and Connie’s Courage encompasses the North West of an era gone by.

The Grafton Girls, As Time Goes By, Across the Mersey by Annie Groves

It was a perfect August day with warm sunshine, and so it was no wonder that the ferry boats ploughing their way across the Mersey to the sandy beaches of New Brighton had their full complement of two thousand passengers apiece, Jean acknowledged. Their mother had always joked that her twin daughters had chosen to make their appearance on the hottest day of the year.

The ferry was approaching the Seacombe landing stage. As always the thought of seeing her twin was filling Jean with a mixture of pleasure and discomfort. Pleasure at the thought of being with the sister that she had been so close to as they grew up, and discomfort at the thought of being with the person that sister had become.  (Extract from Across the Mersey)

Annie Groves writes...

The North West begins somewhere south of Birmingham and ends somewhere north of The Lake District. It runs east to the Pennines and west to the coast. But whenever I see the words The North West, I think ‘Liverpool’.  

Brave, bold, swaggering, secretly soft-hearted,  Liverpool has endured and survived so much, and  has contributed so much to its country in many different ways.

A sea-port city relentlessly bombed during WW2; a creative cradle of musical talent; a home to two equally flamboyant and successful football clubs; a City of Culture, Liverpool takes you by the heart and once taken you never want her to let you go.

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Everville by Clive Barker

Though Liverpool had seemed charmless to Phoebe when she and Musnakaff first entered – its public building austere and grimy, its prvate houses either tenement rows or gloomy mansions – they soon encountered signs iof an inner life that quite endeared the place to her. There were noisy parties going on in a number of residences they passed by, with parties spilling out onto the sidewalk. There were huge bonfires blazing in several of the squares, surrounded by dancing people. There was even a parade of children, singing as they went. (Extract from Everville: The Second Book of The Art)

Clive Barker writes...

There are some very magical backwaters, particularly in central Liverpool; little alleyways which lead onto squares and I’ve always had, I think, a love of the secret side of cities - it’s particularly clear in Imajica when the idea of a city as a body is offered up; cities enthral me and the first city I was ever in thrall with was of course Liverpool and so I’d like to celebrate the city in Art 3.’

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Lime Street at Two, Tuppence Across the Mersey by Helen Forrester

The huge clock still hangs in Lime Street station, Liverpool, and marks a convenient spot for travellers to be met. During World War II, almost every girl in Liverpool must have written to a serviceman coming home on leave, ‘I’ll meet you under the clock at Lime Street.’ There were always women there, dressed in their shabby best, hair long, curled and glossy, pacing nervously under that indifferent timepiece. Every time a train chugged in, they would glance anxiously at the ticket collector’s wickets, while round them swirled other civilians, and hordes of men and women in uniform, khaki, Navy blue, or Air Force blue, staggering under enormous packs and kitbags. (Extract from Lime Street at Two)

Helen Forrester writes...

I miss the Liverpool that doesn’t exist anymore. I always enjoyed living in a world of sailors and ships. I missed the docks and the bustle, the drays with cotton piled up on them, and the general excitement. But I must say that, in a different way, every time I come back to Liverpool, it’s just a little bit better.” “It’s as if its wounds are slowly healing. (From an interview with The Sunday Post, May 29 1994)

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