This is the first book to explore the history of ancient Greek and Roman influences and reception in England's North East, topics which have often transcended social boundaries dictated by working identity, class, religion, gender, and ethnicity.
Together, the chapters cover a broad range of themes and topics from architecture, theatre, working-class education, poetry, post-war novels and Hadrian's Wall. Each section, taken as a whole, views the specific topic from complementary social angles encompassing discrete social classes and constituencies but always remaining aware of the experience of non-elites. United in a classical reception studies approach, contributors draw on a variety of materials such as archives, institutional records, oral histories, magazines, antiquarian journals, newspapers, video and audio recordings, television, photographs, engravings, paintings, drawings, school textbooks, guidebooks, the fabric of buildings, poetry, and fiction to show how modern identities are informed by the Greek and Roman past.
This pioneering and richly illustrated study of classical reception from a local-historical perspective is of interest to students and scholars working in Classics and the social, cultural, intellectual, and local history of England.