John Bramwell
at St Helens – Citadel
Reviewed by Jane Turner March 2018
Northerners get more than their fair share of bad press, with some think tanks writing off whole cities and Boris Johnson casually besmirching one city in a single sentence. This is usually done by those who never set foot much further north than Watford and who think we all live in an industrial and cultural wasteland, eat pies, vote Brexit and keep coal in the bath.
St. Helens, where 58% voted to leave the EU is on the face of it a typical working class northern town, and on a night when the local rugby league team ‘the Saints’ were at home, the pubs and streets were full of men, sporting their team colours and excitedly discussing their team prospects (it ended badly with a defeat by Leeds).