Yorkshire Almanac 2025

Unedited excerpt

The excerpt in the book is shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

Drinkables are not frequent as signs, if we except such as the Rhenish Wine House, and the Canary House; two taverns of Old London, named after the wines they sold. Barley Broth, Bee’s-wing, and Yorkshire Stingo, are at present all three common: the first applies either to whisky or beer; the second is the delicate crimson film left in bottles by old port wine, and Yorkshire stingo is the well-known name of a kind of ale. From a house with this name in the New Road, the first pair of London omnibuses were started, July 4, 1829, running to the Bank and back: they were constructed to carry twenty-two passengers, all inside; the fare was one shilling, or sixpence for half the distance, together with the luxury of a newspaper. A Mr J. Shillibeer was the owner of these carriages, and the first conductors were the two sons of a British naval officer.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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New Road, Whitechapel? It hardly seems worth the effort.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

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New Road, Whitechapel? It hardly seems worth the effort.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Comment

The excerpt quoted begins around 24:30:

The quote in my title is from the programme intro. A perhaps better one, from Charles Cox: “Notorious memoir of a violent criminal and, briefly, professional boxer. Sykes was a drunken thug who spent much of his life in prison, but his book is nevertheless the work of a sensitive and intelligent man.”

As I understand it, the major threat in the Johore Strait, after the Singapore authorities, is from pollution, not sharks. Does anyone know more about his foreign travel claims, unmentioned in his autobio (Sykes 1991)? Is Wood Street nick the now retired police station in London EC2?

First broadcast dated from the Times TV listings for 4 December 1990:

10.40 First Tuesday.
● CHOICE: Paul Sykes from Wakefield was good enough to fight for the British heavyweight boxing championship, and to take an Open University degree, and his autobiography won an Arthur Koestler literary award. But his life has been a shambles. He has spent nearly half of his 46 years in prison and he has a wild and violent temperament which has often made his high intelligence count for nothing. Nick Lord’s profile follows Sykes through his latest prison sentence and his attempts yet again to build a stable life outside. The signs are not promising. Within three months he is back in trouble. A specialist in roaring invective, a Yorkshire Alf Garnett in manner if not necessarily in substance, Sykes is a rich subject and Lord does him justice. Those looking for the roots of Sykes’s behaviour may find them in his tough upbringing at the hands of a martinet father who, of all things, worked as a prison officer.

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