STEPHEN LEWIS dips into a new book which gives an effusive outsider's view of Yorkshire...

IT'S always good to hear a true Yorkshireman expounding the virtues of his native county. Michael Parkinson doesn't disappoint. "I have always considered Yorkshire to be a country rather than a county," he writes, in the foreword to a new book, Yorkshire Encounters. "It is as much set apart by virtue of its language and culture as Scotland or Wales. Its humour and attitudes are specific, and in terms of natural resources and variety of landscape it wants for nothing."

Author Lin Watts wouldn't disagree. She may have been born in London and raised in Berkshire, but Lin considers herself an "adopted daughter of Yorkshire".

But there is something distinctly un-Yorkshire about the effusive way she speaks about the county.

"To me, Yorkshire is a complete reflection of myself," she says, a little immodestly. "I'm fascinated by history and its impact on this small, isolated island of ours. Yorkshire has maintained its history and it is an integral part of its present.

"Also I love the Yorkshire people. They are laid back far more than southerners. Yes, they have their problems, but they don't tend to wear their hearts on their sleeves, don't tend to worry about things in the same way. They have a way of picking themselves up, brushing themselves down, and starting all over again."

Lin fell in love with the county as a child. Back then - the Fifties and Sixties - everyone where she came from was raving about Devon and Cornwall, she says. She was just obsessed with Yorkshire.

Perhaps Devon was a bit too tame for her. "I have gypsy blood in me and I love the open road and wide open spaces," she says.

Whatever the reason, her first visit to Yorkshire left her with a life-long love of the county. So when, years later, the bookseller - she works for a High Street book retailer - decided to write her own book, it was a shoe-in what she would write about.

Yorkshire Encounters, she says, started as a private, photographic journal (she, along with other members of her family, is a keen amateur photographer). But the more she travelled in Yorkshire, the more it grew. The result is a 250-page book, just published by Mainstream, which Lin describes as a "mix of history and travel, observation and anecdote".

Starting at the manor house of Ainderby Myers in North Yorkshire - of which she paints an affectionate historical portrait spanning hundreds of years - Lin takes the reader on a journey over the North York Moors to Whitby on the Yorkshire coast. She then switches to Wensleydale and follows the course of the Ure until it merges with the Ouse. This leads her on to York - "second city in all England. Sacred keeper of all the great ages of our past" - where the book finishes.

Along the way, the reader is introduced to historical figures who have helped shape Yorkshire's identity - from Warwick the Kingmaker to the Bronte sisters, Lawrence Sterne and Henry VIII. There are also more personal encounters - including a meeting with vet Alf Wight, the real James Herriot.

For your typical dour Yorkshireman, the style of Yorkshire Encounters may seem a little OTT. But it is fascinating all the same to see the region through the eyes of an affectionate outsider.

Her account of a meeting with Alf Wight is typical. On one of her visits to Yorkshire she lost her heart to a stray black kitten. All unbeknowing, she made an appointment with a vet in Thirsk to have the kitten checked over.

"It took us all of five minutes to take the little puss into the veterinary surgery," she writes. "Then the shock came. A head popped round the door and called my name. The others looked at me partly in amusement and partly with disbelief.

"There could be no mistaking that accent, nor that familiar face that we had all seen on the covers of his numerous books. This was the famous vet himself, James Herriot, and I was about to follow him down the corridor."

It wasn't long, however, before "this kindly, brilliant man put me at ease immediately with his soft, gentle voice and natural modesty. His look of .... concern touched me, especially when continuing his examination of the kitten he quietly remarked, 'I think this little chap has found a very good home. He's very lucky'."

By Lin's own admission, Yorkshire Encounters focuses mainly on the tourist Yorkshire of the North, West and East Ridings.

It gives a slightly curmudgeonly Mr Parkinson the chance to note, in splendidly Yorkshire style, that Lin has missed out on "his" Yorkshire, "the landscape of pithead gears and smoke-belching steelworks of South Yorkshire where I grew up." Nevertheless, he adds, "her account is diligent and loving, and that it doesn't tell the whole story only serves to illustrate how varied, intriguing and complex Yorkshire really is."

Amen to that.

- Yorkshire Encounters by Lin Watts is published by Mainstream price £15.99.

Updated: 08:34 Saturday, May 24, 2003