The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social StructureKevin Schürer
“When you go to the industrial North you are conscious, quite apart from the unfamiliar scenery, of entering a strange country. This is partly because of the North-South antithesis which has been rubbed into us for such a long time past... The Northerner has ‘grit’, he is grim, ‘dour’, plucky, warm-hearted and democratic; the Southerner is snobbish, effeminate and lazy – that at any rate is the theory.”
Thus wrote the Eton-educated George Orwell (real name Eric Blair) in The Road to Wigan Pier, published in 1937.