Hull’s a poppin’

In early January, lastminute.com recommended its top 15 destinations for 2017. In 12th spot, just above Montreal, Croatia and Japan, was Hull. And if you’re tempted to opt for a snooty chuckle at this point, my advice would be to go to Hull — because, judging from my recent experience, even on a cold January weekend, the place is buzzing with a hugely infectious, if still slightly bashful, sense of rediscovered civic pride. ‘I’ve lived here for 50 years,’ one man told me, ‘and this is the greatest thing that’s happened to the city in my time.’

The ‘this’ he’s referring to is, of course, Hull’s status as the UK City of Culture for 2017. When the government announced the news four years ago, it was greeted with amusement by some people — not all of them living elsewhere. (‘You’re only here for the culture,’ became a regular chant at Hull City home matches, especially when London teams were visiting.)

James Walton and Sam Jordison discuss Hull’s resurgence on the podcast:

The reasons for this initial self-deprecating defensiveness aren’t hard to find. For one thing, Hullensians — I was repeatedly told — have an inbuilt determination not to be impressed by anything too fancy. For another, the past 80-odd years have done plenty to make the city’s feelings of being either neglected or scorned by the rest of the country entirely understandable.

As the locals will soon tell you — but as hardly anybody else seems to know — Hull was second only to London as Britain’s most bombed city during the Blitz. The 1970s Cod Wars wiped out the fishing industry on which it largely depended. In 2003, the bestselling book Crap Towns chortlingly named Hull the crappest UK town of all — something the inhabitants still try to laugh off, but which clearly stung.