Ten Words For A Northern Landscape: Episode 8: Childhood

In the eighth episode - Childhood - Caroline goes on a journey across the uplands, meeting and talking with poets, teachers, writers, illustrators and playwrights.

In Wearhead Primary School, she speaks to deputy headteacher Liz Judges about children growing up in Weardale and how living in the countryside affects them. The disparity between schooling and life experience for young people in rural areas compared to bigger cities is explored, and we hear how teenagers kept themselves entertained when there was just ‘one bus going to Newcastle on Saturdays’.

With author Sarah Moss, Caroline talks about northern identity, working class masculinity and growing up in rural areas. Critics have called Moss’s latest book, Ghost Wall, ‘a Brexit novel’, about a man enthralled by a lost England. The narrative focuses on Bill, a father keen to implement the social mores and societal rules of a Britain from long ago, and his beloved daughter who is growing into a woman in front of him.

Narrated and recorded by Caroline Beck
Produced by Jay Sykes

Ten Words for a Northern Landscape is commissioned Northern Heartlands and produced as part of Durham Book Festival, a Durham County Council event. The recording was made possible by funding and support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England. Look out for Ten Words for a Northern Landscape on the New Writing North podcast and Durham Book Festival website.

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