Times Past: The Story of York


Bill Hearld

Category Non-Fiction
Pub Date April 2007
ISBN 1 84502 148 7
Extent 160 pp.
Price £12.99
Format Paperback with flaps, 240 x 230 mm
Plate/Illustrations Black and white photographs throughout



A beautifully illustrated volume chronicling the life and times of this historic, world- famous tourist city, Times Past: The Story of York brings together a collection of striking, evocative photographs charting the happy, sad and historic moments of York’s recent past. It illustrates York’s changing face, its people, daily life and its triumphs as a railway, chocolate-manufacturing and horse-racing city.

Founded by the Romans, developed by the Vikings, battered by William the Conqueror and now invaded by four million tourists a year, the greatest changes in the city’s history occurred in the last 150 years and did not involve bloodshed but simple social and economic pressure.

With chapters such as York At Home, York at Work, York at Play, Wartime York and Royal York, this volume paints a moving, nostalgic picture of a city of which George VI famously said, ‘The history of York is the history of England.’

This book, collated by Bill Hearld, deputy editor of The York Press and a journalist in the city for many years, is not a history of York but a pictorial record of an exciting period of change as chronicled by photographers and reporters from the city’s local newspaper who have been involved in the daily life of York for over a century.