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Barrow should stop moaning and play to its strengths

Barrovians are a proud lot, Chris Blackhurst admits, and Bill Bryson's depiction of their hometown has not gone down well

Sunday 09 December 2018 14:43 GMT
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A Walk In The Woods Exclusive Interview With Bill Bryson

The good people of my hometown are not happy. No surprise there, since Barrow-in-Furness, in Cumbria, was once cited as the most miserable town in Britain.

What the compilers of that survey completely failed to understand is that Barrovians, as they’re known, like nothing more than a moan. They’re a proud lot, isolated, on a peninsula sticking out into Morecambe Bay. Inevitably, they tend to see the world in black and white terms, as us against them – with them being very much the distant, ruling class, the sort of folk in fact who ask intrusive questions and complete nonsense questionnaires about degrees of happiness (last week it was the turn of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, to be named the “worst town in England”, according to a poll).

This time, though, they really are annoyed. The source of their complaint is the author Bill Bryson, once of this parish, back when The Independent was a print-only newspaper. In his book, in which he tours Britain and likes to poke fun, The Road to Little Dribbling, Bryson hails Barrow as being “just about the most out-on-a-limb, end-of-the-line place in England”. Known for its industry, “these days it is famous for being forgotten and depressed”. On his visit, one of the main streets was full of “tattooed and dangerous-looking men”, with an atmosphere akin to a prison yard.

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