This book tells the history of the North of England over 2000 years, from the coming of the Romans to the present. For at least half the period the North was a military frontier zone, acting as a buffer against the Caledonians, the Picts and finally the Scots. The military role of the region shaped it social structure and institutions, not least its church, and gave rise to the long line of warrior-bishops and legendary wardens who did so much to form its identity. The author identifies four great periods of Northern pre-eminence: the prosperous and politically powerful third century; the cultural supremacy of the Kingdom of Northumbria; the age of the northern kingmakers in the 14th and 15th centuries; and the great industrial civilization of the late 18th and 19th centuries. The key to northern history, the author argues, lies in its relationship with, and periodic resistance to, the South. This was at the heart of the expulsion of Earl Tostig in 1065, or resitance to William in 1069, of Wyvill's Yorkshire association of landowners in 1779, of the fight against the Poor Law of 1834, no less than of the miners' strike of 1984.