Newcastle has never been short of outside observers willing to pass judgement on its people. From bewildered antiquaries struggling with the dialect to a Russian novelist convinced that Jesmond's Sunday respectability was a kind of tyranny, visitors across four centuries have arrived with opinions and left, more often than not, quietly converted. In this essay, Sue Hope gathers their testimony - Wesley, Dickens, Zamyatin to name a few, to ask what the world has made of Tyneside and what...

We all know Victorian Newcastle must have been a dangerous place to live in - disease and crime to name a few. Sue Hope has delved into...