Catherine (Kitty) McMullen, is seventeen, restless and rebellious. Resentful of her mother Kate's new husband, she yearns for stories of the father she never knew and when her gossipy aunt divulges that he was a wealthy gentleman, Catherine's discontent with grimy, impoverished Jarrow grows. Taking a job at the workhouse laundry, her young eyes are further confronted with the horrors and indignities of poverty, and she becomes even more determined to rise above her wretched surroundings by educating herself. Braving the ridicule of fellow staff, Catherine embarks on a quest for knowledge. Soon the ill-educated and streetwise Kitty McMullen is a ghost of the past, and the well-spoken, well-read Catherine leaves the north-east to follow her dreams. But hardship and heartbreak are not far behind, and there are battles to be fought and won for this plucky and romantic heroine. RETURN TO JARROW concludes the bestselling trilogy that began with THE JARROW LASS and continued with A CHILD OF JARROW.

To escape the malign interest of her possessive and drunken step-father, Kate Fawcett is sent away from teeming Tyneside and finds work at Ravensworth Castle. She soon attracts the attention of charming, headstrong Alexander Pringle Davies, a distant cousin of the Earl, who risks incurring the wrath of his family by courting lowly Kate. Kate finally succumbs and allows herself to be seduced, but Alexander is forced abroad by his father and into an unwanted betrothal. Discovering she is carrying Alexander's child, Kate goes home to face the wrath of her step-father and the censure of their neighbours and resigns herself to a lonely life of drudgery. But it is her daughter Catherine who gives her life meaning and keeps Kate from giving up - that and the thought that Alexander might one day return to claim her and their angel child.

Brought up in Jarrow in the harsh years of the 1870s, Rose dreams of the world beyond the grime of the town. Capturing the heart of handsome steelworker William Fawcett, a respectable and happy future seem possible. But tragedy strikes and Rose must find the will to survive and save her young family from destitution

The Sunday Times Bestseller 'A tribute and a rallying call' - Guardian Three and half weeks. Three hundred miles. I saw roaring arterial highway and silent lanes, candlelit cathedrals and angry men in bad pubs. The Britain of 1936 was a land of beef paste sandwiches and drill halls. Now we are nation of vaping and nail salons, pulled pork and salted caramel. In the autumn of 1936, some 200 men from the Tyneside town of Jarrow marched 300 miles to London in protest against the destruction of their towns and industries. Precisely 80 years on, Stuart Maconie, walks from north to south retracing the route of the emblematic Jarrow Crusade. Travelling down the country’s spine, Maconie moves through a land that is, in some ways, very much the same as the England of the 30s with its political turbulence, austerity, north/south divide, food banks and of course, football mania. Yet in other ways, it is completely unrecognisable. Maconie visits the great cities as well as the sleepy hamlets, quiet lanes and roaring motorways. He meets those with stories to tell and whose voices build a funny, complex and entertaining tale of Britain, then and now.

As the major writer and thinker of the Anglo-Saxon period, the Venerable Bede is a key figure in the study of the literature and thought of this time. This Companion, written by an international team of specialists, is a key introductory guide to Bede, his writings, and his world. The first part of the volume focuses on Bede's cultural and intellectual milieu, covering his life, the secular-political contexts of his day, the foundations of the Latin learning he inherited and sought to perpetuate, the ecclesiastical and monastic setting of early Northumbria, and the foundation of his home institution, Wearmouth-Jarrow. The book then considers Bede's writing in detail, treating his educational, exegetical and historical works. Concluding with a detailed assessment of Bede's influence and reception from the time of his death up to the modern age, the Companion enables the reader to view Bede's writings within a wider cultural context.

Examines a variety of events and developments in twentieth-century British history - from the Boer war to the demise of the GLC. The historical perspective provides an illuminating understanding of the interaction between the media and evolving social and political processes. Together the chapters provide an original picture of the ways in which press, cinema, radio and television can be seen as having wielded power in the course of this century.