In the original dustsheet. Binding the same as the dustsheet.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

I’ve had two spells living in Yorkshire, though I only remember one of them (when I lived and worked in Leeds) as the other (when I lived in Pocklington) occurred while I was a baby. Quite apart from those two spells, I’ve also visited Yorkshire on plenty of other occasions, especially to visit racecourses or to visit relatives who live there, and I’ve also passed through Yorkshire innumerable times on my travels. All of these experiences mean that I have a soft spot for Yorkshire and there is no shortage of sights that could be included in a book like this.

Of course, Yorkshire is no longer one county for most administration purposes, as the politicians have carved it up into smaller units, sometimes creating those new counties by combining bits of Yorkshire with bits of adjoining counties. However, the public – and not just in Yorkshire – still think of Yorkshire as one county in their minds. The politicians may mess with the administrative boundaries, but Yorkshire will still be there long after the meddling politicians have gone. This book covers the whole area of Yorkshire as the public knows it to be, except for the northernmost area that includes Middlesbrough and Redcar. The map on page 2 implies that Scunthorpe and Grimsby are included, but they were never part of Yorkshire and aren`t mentioned elsewhere in the book. See, whoever drew up that map was confused by all the boundary changes (they included the whole of Humberside, not just the Yorkshire part), but the book does not include any pictures from that area. Beauty, as the saying goes, is in the eyes of the beholder. This book captures many aspects of Yorkshire, both urban and rural, but I’ve never been a fan of modern architecture and, with rare exceptions that I don’t see here, wouldn’t describe it as beautiful. Once upon a time, bridges, banks, railway stations, town halls, churches and other important buildings not only served a function but also made a statement of some kind about the area in which they were located or the type of people using them, therefore the extra expenditure of providing something beautiful was regarded as an investment. So those buildings were invariably designed to impress, but this attitude changed during the course of the twentieth century, with functionality and cost becoming all-important. The Humber bridge was a long overdue transport link when it was finally constructed, especially as it was the one major British estuary that the railway builders never attempted to cross by either bridge or tunnel. Sadly, being just another suspension bridge, it lacks aesthetic appeal to me, especially as the picture’s background is also dull. Similarly, I’m glad that a large area of derelict Leeds that was badly in need of redevelopment when I lived in the city has since been transformed. The result is a vast improvement on the wasteland that it replaced, but it doesn’t look beautiful, at least to me.

Having said all that, most of this book shows Yorkshire at its most beautiful, with pictures of outstanding rural landscapes as well as historic buildings built when people cared about what they looked like. In many ways, this is an excellent book, but the inclusion of unattractive modern buildings and the exclusion of the Middlesbrough and Redcar region (where there are some sights worthy of inclusion) oblige me to reduce my rating to four stars. If you think the Humber bridge and the modern buildings in Leeds have a place in a book devoted to Yorkshire’s most beautiful sights, rather than its prosperity, and if you’re not bothered about the omission of the northernmost region, add the fifth star back in.