In a homogeneous age, local difference sometimes feels lost, even though a study of the genetic makeup of Britons showed that nearly half of us still live where our ancestors lived a thousand years ago. Something of this unchanging identity is revealed by Huddersfield’s moment of triumph on Monday when it won its return to the top flight of football, 45 years after crashing out of it. The victory over Reading by a team that 18 months ago was fighting relegation has its own magic, all the more so given its 1920s record, equalled but never beaten, for winning the league three times running; it won the FA Cup in same decade. Today, Huddersfield blazes a grand history into the national headlines. Its Victorian public buildings are so magnificent that the railway station is Grade I listed and Friedrich Engels called it the “handsomest by far of all the factory towns”. It is the home of one of the world’s leading new music festivals, a place where composers like Stockhausen went, and others still go, before others hear them. Its identity is shaped by the Industrial Revolution, its political fame assured through its son, the former PM Harold Wilson, who “had Huddersfield written all over him”. These remarkable qualities make it typical of the towns beloved by residents but overlooked by others until the spotlight swings – as it happily has done again.
