Non Fiction
ISBN: 9781781724118
Publication date: November 27, 2017
Price: £9.99
Out of stock
In Real Barnsley, Ian McMillan delves into the past of the Barnsley area in which he was born and still lives, exploring its history and recalling his various experiences of this particular patch of South Yorkshire.
Barnsley, which is mentioned in the Domesday Book, became an important commercial and cultural centre for the surrounding area, the home of cinemas, theatres, civic life and McMillan’s beloved Tykes – Barnsley FC. Appropriately for the home of an ancient glass blowing industry, it was the site of the first bottlebank in Britain.
In the book McMillan also tours the towns and villages which surround Barnsley: Penistone, Hoyland Common, Wombwell, Cawthorne, Royston, Carlton, Cudworth, Grimesthorpe and his native Darfield. Some were mining villages, home to the seventy collieries in a 15 mile radius of Barnsley – all now closed. McMillan discovers that as the industrial tide has ebbed, the heritage tide has flowed, with the establishment of the Elsecar Heritage Centre at an old ironworks, and other museums. And there are always the moors, where workers have escaped over the centuries and where the film Kes was shot.
As the Bard of Barnsley finds, Barnsley is nothing if not an eclectic mix of brass bands and the Barnsley Chop on the one hand, and the Arctic Monkeys and Saxon on the other. His pages are peopled by Michael Parkinson, cricket umpire Dicky Bird, sculptor Graham Ibbeson, Lord Halifax, poet Ebenezer Elliott, the highwayman Swift Nick and a host of interesting, regular people. And present throughout is McMillan himself, one of the most popular poets and broadcasters in the country. Real Barnsley is his shared story.
Ian McMillan
Ian McMillan is a poet, journalist, playwright, and broadcaster, known for his strong and distinctive Barnsley-area accent. He lives in Darfield, the town of his birth.
He began performing on the live poetry circuit in the 1970s and has published several volumes of poetry, for adults and children. He is regarded as an enthusiastic advocate of poetry. McMillan has had journalism published in Q Magazine and Mojo, and writes a weekly column for The Barnsley Chronicle. He is also ‘poet in residence’ to Barnsley FC and is known as the ‘Bard of Barnsley’. His play Sister Josephine Kicks the Habit premiered in 2005. In 2010 McMillan was appointed poet-in-residence at the English National Opera.
McMillan hosts the The Verb and Proms variation Adverb on Radio 3, “dedicated to investigating spoken words around the globe”. He is a roving contributor to the Today Programme, and has also been a panellist on Just A Minute and was a castaway on Desert Island Discs. He is a frequent guest on Newsnight Review, The Mark Radcliffe Show, You & Yours, The Culture Show, Never Mind The Full Stops and Have I Got News For You?, and narrates The Museum on BBC 2. He has also provided voice-overs in tv advertisements.
In 2007, McMillan published Collins Chelp and Chunter: a Guide to the Tyke Tongue, a compilation of Yorkshire dialect and a few pieces of Yorkshire humour.
‘There are more, often hilarious, vignettes than points on the local map, every one of which is covered.’
The Yorkshire Times
