A Northerner in exile, Stuart Maconie goes on a journey in search of the North, attempting to discover where the clichés end and the truth begins. He travels from Wigan Pier to Blackpool Tower and Newcastle’s Bigg Market to the Lake District to find his own Northern Soul, encountering along the way an exotic cast of chippy Scousers, pie-eating woollybacks, topless Geordies, mad-for-it Mancs, Yorkshire nationalists and brothers in southern exile.

What the critics say...

Maconie makes a jovial, self-deprecating narrator. Sharp and funny
Guardian

Stuart Maconie is the best thing to come out of Wigan since the A58 to Bolton
Peter Kay

Witty and wise, with more good lines than the Angel of the North
Hunter Davies

Effortlessly articulate
The Times

A lyrical, passionate, humorous and argumentative tour du force ... Imagine Nick Danzinger meets Nik Cohen meets Ricky Tomlinson and you've got the perfect blend of humorously incisive northern-travel writing. An early contender for best travel book of the year.
Big Issue North

An heir to Alan Bennett … stirring and rather wonderful
Anthony QuinnSunday Times

Funnier than Bill Bryson. There’s lots to love about Maconie’s North – even for Southern Jessies
Metro

Affectionate, informed, conversationally honest, polemical
Daily Telegraph

Lyrical, passionate, humorous and argumentative tour de force…an early contender for the best travel book of the year
Big Issue

Observant, enthusiastic and sympathetic
GQ

One of the delights of Pies and Prejudice is Maconie's prose...behind Maconie's crafted wordplay is a serious thesis: that the North is more than its image
The Times

The books succeeds...because of his care and wit in revealing something of these wonderful cities
Observer

Maconie is such an enjoyable writer
Guardian

[Stuart Maconie’s] search for his northern soul has just the right balance of pies and prejudice to be right good
Independent

Something far more thoughtful here than just a travelogue played for laughs.
Publishing News

A witty and illuminating travelogue
Sunday Times