In this follow up to the author’s hugely popular History of Newcastle, John Grundy turns his attention to the vast and beguiling history of Northumberland. Drawing on his experience as a Listed Buildings Man, John traces the county’s turbulent history with particular focus on the castles, mansions, houses and streets where people lived their lives and fought for survival. Whether it be civil wars, invading armies, plague or poverty, the people of Northumberland have toughed it out throughout the centuries against all kind of challenges. However, one thing that has remained constant is the wild beauty of the place. From its glorious coastline to the splendid market towns with their monuments, grand houses and fortifications, this vast county has the ability to both evoke the past while bringing pleasure to its current inhabitants ‑ as well as millions of tourists every year. Featuring new attractive colour photographs this book will give you a greater appreciation of the place, its buildings and its people and provides the perfect companion to further explore the county. John’s journey to get to the heart of what it means to experience Northumberland has taken decades and, in this book, he wants to share with you a very personal take on why the county means so much to him.

John was born in Carlisle but since 1970 he has lived in Newcastle. He was an English teacher for 40 years but managed to combine that career with his passion for the architecture and history of the North of England, a passion that was encouraged when his Auntie Bessie gave him a copy of Niklaus Pevsner ‘s “Cumberland and Westmorland” on his 16th birthday. In the 1980s he left teaching for three years to become a fieldworker on the Re-survey of Listed Buildings in Northumberland and since then he has made many TV programmes about North-Eastern architecture for BBC North East, Tyne Tees and BBC2. On the radio he was a presenter of ‘Take a Place Like’ on Radio Four. He was the co-writer of the 2nd edition of Pevsner’s “Northumberland “and the author of “Northern Pride”, a survey of Northern architecture. His most recent publication is “John Grundy’s History of Newcastle on Tyne” published in 2016 and he remains a regular contributor to “The Northumbrian” magazine. He still lives in the same house that he bought in 1970. He is married with three grown-up children and two beautiful and growing up grand daughters