Yorkshire Historic Dictionary Launch Ian McMillan, the Bard of Barnsley

Event details

The Borthwick Institute welcomes Ian McMillan to the University to celebrate the launch of the Yorkshire Historic Dictionary with a talk about language, history, tradition and creativity. There will also be an opportunity for audience members to view a 360° digital installation created by University of York students and inspired by the dictionary’s contents. 

The Yorkshire Historic Dictionary is a significant new resource for anyone interested in Yorkshire’s language, culture and history. Collected by Dr George Redmonds over a sixty-year career, the dictionary’s 4000 entries give new insight into Yorkshire’s naming traditions; its specialist trades and industries; its landscape and wildlife; and its links to the wider world. 

The project was generously funded by the Marc Fitch Fund, in memory of Professor David Hey, Dr Redmonds’ lifelong friend and collaborator, and in partnership with the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society. A hard copy version of the Dictionary will be published through the YAHS Record Series towards the end of 2019.

After the lecture, there will be a drinks reception with the opportunity to meet Ian McMillan and to purchase one of his books. We will also be using RCH/005 (the 3Sixty space) to show a digital installation created by University of York students from Yorkshire Historic Dictionary data. 

Ian McMillan

Ian McMillan, ‘the Bard of Barnsley’, is a writer and broadcaster who presents ‘The Verb’ on BBC Radio 3 every Friday night. He has been a poet, broadcaster, commentator and programmer maker for over 30 years and is known for his work on Yorkshire and the Yorkshire language.  He is poet-in-residence for The Academy of Urbanism, Barnsley FC and is Barnsley’s Poet Laureate. He’s written poems, plays, a verse autobiography ‘Talking Myself Home’and a voyage round Yorkshire in ‘Neither Nowt Nor Summat’. Ian’s latest collection ‘To Fold The Evening Star – New and Selected Poems’ (Carcanet) was published last year.