Description

Well known in his native Tyneside, Harry’s best selling Northern Lights, the most borrowed book in Newcastle Library, took aim at the appalling treatment of the North East.
there is an england [note the lack of capitals] widens the scope of Harry’s pen to the current state of the country. In his own words:
“A country with a parliament dating back over 800 years: a country which boasts a long line of engineers, inventors and pioneers who between them nigh-on made the modern world as we know it. Yet it was also a country which – to the eyes of many outsiders – seemed hell-bent on a level of self-harm which would previously never have been believed possible.”
“…like a spark in a furnace” – Wendy Pratt,  in Northern Soul – about Northern Lights

Stella Backhouse in Here Comes Everyone writes: “…publishing a collection that argues that ‘leave’ was the wrong decision could look like a spectacular act of self-sabotage. In fact, Gallagher’s new collection, there is an england, squares this circle by presenting Brexit as an unwitting act of class betrayal. England’s white working class, he argues, is a fundamentally decent social group whose historically fair-minded instincts have been hijacked and subverted by politicians and by media both traditional and online.” Stella’s full review can be read here.