Yorkshire: A lyrical history of England's greatest county

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Later on, in pursuit of the same man, another cop threatens to rape a woman he encounters so that she will stay out of the way of the arrest. There are no rebukes from an upright chief superintendent. As the years passed and the Ripper’s tally of victims edged upwards and began to embrace women other than sex workers – and with the police seemingly at sea – David lost his initial excitement and began to fear for his mother’s life, begging her not to leave the house. “My sister used to say her prayers out loud every night, and she would always say, ‘Dear God, please don’t let the Ripper kill my mum,’” Peace told the Guardian in 2001. “Because of the way she was, she’d have to say it 10 times. If she lost count, she’d have to start again. It did my head in.” The Stripey Badger opened recently in Grassington and also has a cafe next door so you can enjoy the heady combination of culture and cake. What more could anyone want? Well obviously, there are no limits to how many books a true bibliophile can hoard. If that sounds like you, you could do worse than head to Sedbergh, England's book town where you'll find the wonderful Westwood Books and several other great book shops or shops that sell books among other items. The Red Riding Quartet garnered more attention with each volume, and in 2003 Peace was named in Granta magazine’s prestigious list of the Best British Writers under 40, although he did not take part in the photo shoot: “I remember thinking, they look like a bunch of w______. They’re all London-based. They just seem a literary elite.” He has gone on to find further success with his novel about Brian Clough, The Damned Utd (filmed in 2009 with Michael Sheen) and a trilogy of offbeat crime novels set in Japan.

Peace dedicated 1977 “to the victims of the crimes attributed to the Yorkshire Ripper, and to their families … [and] to the men and women who tried to stop those crimes”, while stressing that “this book remains a work of fiction”. Peace plays with the facts in his quartet: Sutcliffe is renamed Peter Williams, and the victims’ names are also changed, with the details of their lives and deaths altered too. On leaving grammar school Priestley worked in the wool trade of his native city of Bradford, but had ambitions to become a writer. He was to draw on memories of Yorkshire in many of the works he wrote after he had moved south.

Born in York, Mike Pannett is an author of novels which recount his experience as a rural beat officer in the Ryedale district of North Yorkshire. He wrote his first novel, 1974, purely for his own satisfaction, researching 1970s Yorkshire using the microfiched British newspapers in the Japanese public libraries; his father persuaded him to submit it for publication, and the small independent firm Serpent’s Tail published the book in 1999.

This was probably because it followed too closely the rhythms of the standard TV crime drama, especially in its focus on Toby Jones’s dogged and capable cop DCS Dennis Hoban. With his Tetley Tea Folk accent and fondness for Emmerdale Farm, Hoban was a thoroughly reassuring presence, fulfilling the familiar TV role of the dedicated detective who will ensure that justice is done in the end. Castle Hill Bookshopin Richmond has an excellent collection of books about the local area and helps to organise the Richmond Walking and Book Festival together with Swaledale Outdoor Club and a team of volunteers. The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley on the fringes of the Yorkshire Dales has an excellent selection of books, is a good place to learn more about the Ilkley Literary Festival & has an added benefit - it's very close to a branch of Bettys' Tea Rooms! The real Dennis Hoban certainly deserves to be celebrated for taking the murders of sex workers more seriously than some of his colleagues and shrewdly joining the dots that suggested a serial killer was at work. But as I watched the programme I couldn’t help comparing it with another, much more unsettling, work that was also inspired by the Sutcliffe murders. I wonder if there's something about the area around Settle and the Three Peaks because it's also inspired another thriller, The Penyghent Blood by Roger Ratcliffe.

I bought Haytime in the Yorkshire Dales edited by Don Gamble & Tanya St. Pierre some time ago and still love to dip into the pictures and descriptions of our wonderful flower-rich hay meadows. It covers their biodiversity, traditional farming methods and how they’ve inspired creative people for generations.