Other county aldermen play prominent roles in some of the plots, as do several residents, with several chapters focusing on their actions and thoughts rather than on Burton and Carne.

Winifred Holtby - Wikipedia

Women have never disliked men as men have often seemed to dislike women,” she wrote in 1929, in a piece titled “The Man Colleague” that anticipates an insight often attributed to Germaine Greer, who asserted more than 40 years later that “women have very little idea of how much men hate them”.It’s a telling piece of writing and makes the reader thoroughly uncomfortable; one knows a secret and nothing can be done with it. Many have heard of the Brontë sisters, but are you familiar with Winifred Holtby, one of Yorkshire’s lesser-known literary daughters? It was adapted for television by Stan Barstow for Yorkshire Television in 1974, starring Hermione Baddeley as Mrs Beddows, Dorothy Tutin as Sarah Burton, Nigel Davenport as Robert Carne and Judi Bowker as Midge Carne.

South Riding (2011 TV series) - Wikipedia South Riding (2011 TV series) - Wikipedia

And then there are the ones that make you feel as if the author had extended a hand and held yours, that for the duration of your reading, you found a mirror so perfect it validated everything you'd been and everything you wished to be. She never married, though Harry Pearson proposed to her on her deathbed, possibly at the instigation of Vera Brittain. She was happy to do this, for all that she was now a published novelist and a prolific journalist, but what amazes is that Brittain was so casual about her generosity, accepting it as her due. The leading characters are Sarah Burton, an idealistic young headmistress; Robert Carne of Maythorpe Hall, tormented by his disastrous marriage; Joe Astell, a socialist fighting poverty; and Mrs Beddows, the first woman alderman of the district. We see the few chances given to women and the sacrifices made by many bright young girls, the hardship and the poverty and the desperation of those finding themselves in difficulty.Robert Carne is a gentleman-farmer, struggling to make ends meet because his wife is in an asylum (an expensive one) and trying to bring up his daughter alone. The geographical area is the one Holtby grew up in and is in actuality the East Riding of Yorkshire, the area just north of the Humber centred on the city of Hull (Kingsport in the book); an area I know well. South Riding is also a story about loss and grief and how one faces the future after such an overwhelming pain!