On Ilkley Moor : The Story of an English Town

by Tim Binding

Tim Binding lived in Ilkley, Yorkshire, until he was seven. The place shaped his imagination and has haunted him ever since. On Ilkley Moor is an imaginative history of a great town, a series of explorations partly factual, partly intuitive and partly personal. It is the tale of Victorian optimism. It is a book about the North, about industry, commerce and medicine and, above all, it is a story of the England of the fifties, and the lost dreams of that era.

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Novelist Tim Binding was born in Germany in 1947. A former editor at Penguin Books in London, he is a part-time commissioning editor at London publishers Simon & Schuster. He is the author of the novels, In the Kingdom of Air (1993), A Perfect Execution (1996) (shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize), Island Madness (1998), set on Guernsey during the Second World War, and Man Overboard (2005).

He co-wrote a comedy drama series for BBC television in 1998, entitled The Last Salute, working with Simon Nye, creator of the Men Behaving Badly comedy series. On Ilkley Moor: The Story of an English Town (2001), is a memoir and history of the area where he grew up. Anthem, a moving and entertaining story of the horror of war and its consequences, was published in 2003. His latest novel is Sylvie and the Songman (2008) and is illustrated by Angela Barrett.


Tim Binding lives in Kent with his wife and daughter.

Reviews

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished reading this and I loved it. Possibly helped by the fact I was born in Ilkley and therefore recognised all the names and places. Nevertheless I also loved the style and the use of the third person which brings the whole thing to life and absolutely captures the ‘personality’ of Ilkley as I remember it. (There was also a mention of one of my aunties back in 1920 that was an added bonus!) Oh and the Jimi Hendrix gig of which I have blurred memories. Great job!

[Dan Sumption · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a peculiar book, part history of a town, part autobiography (infuriatingly written in the third person), and part speculation. It feels like something which the author was compelled to write, wrote purely for himself in fact, and I found it very hard going, but there are moments of wonder in the reanimation of the Victorian worthies who made this very singular northern town what it is.

[Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of the Yorkshire village of Ilkley, written in quite an experimental way.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a surprisingly lovely book - about the development of a town and the people who founded it. Sounds dull perhaps, but it is far from that.