Words From Hyem

Historian, author, songwriter, poet, businessman, humourist, man-about-town, lexicologist, Society of Antiquaries stalwart, President of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne and a canny bit else besides, Richard Oliver Heslop is the Toon's forgotten Victorian champion. The man responsible for Northumberland Words - his popular and nationally recognised dialect dictionary, prior to then a weekly feature in the Newcastle Chronicle - was a towering figure of his day and not just on his own doorstep. Oliver, as he was commonly known, was renowned and read throughout his home county; up to the Borders but also south to Durham... and beyond. Both of his time and ahead of it, he knew everyone, it seems. And yet, since his death in 1916, in the middle of World War One, an astonishing contribution to the locality in which he was raised and the dialect he championed had been all but overlooked before Geordie: The Musical, a production first staged in 2015, shone a light on his contribution. And now, Words from Hyem, a lovingly researched and occasionally tragic book flavoured with north country wit, fleshes out an individual who in any number of ways embodied the UK's Victorian cultural age. In fact, Words from Hyem - 'Words from Home' - has its own heart-breaking story to tell. Initially it had one author, South Shields-born Andy Bogle who as he began his research lived in the USA but could just as often be found at his second home in Hexham. Now, it has two. 'Adopted Geordie' Tony Hannan - a Yorkshireman with in-laws galore in Shields - needed little persuasion to take up the reins when Andy sadly passed away in August 2023. Far from a simple life story, Words from Hyem - The Life and Rhymes of Richard Oliver Heslop takes 21st century readers on an entertaining and literary whistlestop tour of North East history and popular culture. And in doing so shines a fascinating light on Northumbria's too-long overlooked Renaissance Man.