‘Moss takes us through a near-mythical landscape, a disappearing county of witches, mills, dales, meres, pop music and the first industrial proletariat. An engrossing tour of the landscape that created modern Britain’ NICHOLAS BLINCOE

Through cotton, canals and railways, science, television and sport, Lancashire helped shape the modern world. Liverpool was once the UK’s busiest port, Manchester its industrial powerhouse; Blackpool invented the working-class seaside resort. Lancashire was the first part of Britain to industrialise – but also the first to see those industries decline.

In Lancashire, travel writer Chris Moss returns to his native county after almost four decades away. To make sense of the deep past and the recent convulsions of Lancashire, Manchester and Merseyside, he visits familiar and unknown corners, seeking a sense of place as well as the elusive sensation of a homecoming.

Exploring a county that is often misunderstood, even maligned. Lancashire reaches beyond caricatures and clichés to trace lines from the region’s long history to its conflicted, contradictory present.