In the original dustsheet. Purple cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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Tim Binding lived in Ilkley, Yorkshire until he was seven, and the place shaped his imagination and has haunted him ever since, especially the death by drowning of Michael Airey, his childhood friend. On Ilkley Moor is an imaginative history of a town: a series of explorations, partly factual, partly intuitive and partly personal. It is the tale of Victorian optimism – of faith in hydropathy, in manufacturing, in the railways. It is an examination of Ilkley’s place on the faultline between the two great forces which have informed English life and culture: its rural heritage and the industrial revolution. It is a book about the north, about industry, commerce and medicine and, above it all, it is one small story of England, of going back, of the fifties and the lost dreams of that era – not a travel book, but a return home to the place that made the writer what he is.

• ‘An evocative, resonant and sometimes disturbing book’ Philip Hoare, Independent

• ‘Fascinating… a journey into the heart of Yorkshire gone by, this is a powerful book, constantly informed by the hulking moor above the town’ Conde Nast Traveller

Reviews:

• An intensely creative imagining of place, this tends towards the overwritten and occasionally the frankly sentimental, especially in the poem Binding writes to his mother’s memory in the final chapter, nevertheless, I found things to enjoy in it, such as the wrangling between two council members, and the rather overwrought account of a murder which took place of an unfortunate woman. I know Ilkley quite well, having been taken there as a child. It’s a place with a river, quite a wild one as I remember, and the moor above the town does rather hulk and glower so it is easy to see how Binding was able to romanticise the place. If that kind of writing appeals, you’ll enjoy this book. If you’d rather just have the facts, then you’d be missing something in my opinion. Binding treats the heart of the place, rather than it’s head, and, in the main, I enjoyed his excesses of description and didn’t find it hard to pick up again. The history of the place is covered, with two world wars taken in, with stories of battles in the Boer War of especial note, and the hydropathy craze in the late 19th and early 20th centuries providing a wealth of eccentric stories. I’m not sure how much was added to this by being told of amounts deposited in the bank by the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, and other esoteric facts, but the history of the Belgian Refugees, and the story of Jimi Hendrix’s visit to the Gyro Club and the chaos that resulted are interesting asides. I would suggest this will be an instant success for anyone who has visited the place, but don’t expect a straightforward read. It’s a hotchpotch of fact and fancy and that’s okay with me, but probably not with those who like to be led by a writer, rather than being left to find what interests the reader.

• This book is arguably the best yet by the established author Tim Binding. Although it is marketed as a biography of Ilkley it goes, however, far deeper than that. It is much more than a mere travel or history book. It is very personal along with being factual, and also partly autobiographical. Binding deliberately writes in the third person when referring to himself, consciously wishing to detach himself from this return to his childhood, his growing up period. On Ilkley Moor is extremely moving, in particular as a poem at the end of the book dedicated to his mother, characterised by a repeating line, ‘Oh but she loved me’. References to the tragic drowning of his childhood friend in the swollen river Wharfe amongst other happenings leave lasting impressions on the reader. Binding writes with verve and imagination, its haunting, tragic themes and tones left a great effect on me. If I had my way everyone would try reading it. A truly great book.

Novelist Tim Binding was born in Germany in 1947. A former editor at Penguin Books in London, he is a part-time commissioning editor at London publishers Simon & Schuster. He is the author of the novels, In the Kingdom of Air (1993), A Perfect Execution (1996) (shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize), Island Madness (1998), set on Guernsey during the Second World War, and Man Overboard (2005). He co-wrote a comedy drama series for BBC television in 1998, entitled The Last Salute, working with Simon Nye, creator of the Men Behaving Badly comedy series. On Ilkley Moor: The Story of an English Town (2001), is a memoir and history of the area where he grew up. Anthem, a moving and entertaining story of the horror of war and its consequences, was published in 2003. Sylvie and the Songman (2008), is his first book for children.

Tim Binding lives in Kent with his wife and daughter. His latest novel is The Champion (2011).