During the time I didn't play for England, they were losing Test matches, and the Yorkshire committee were telling me that I should be batting for my country. Then, when I decided to make myself available to play for England again in 1977, and Yorkshire lost a couple of matches in my absence, they criticised me for not being there.

Geoffrey Boycott

My dad, Donald, was a vet and had a practice in Yorkshire. Cats and dogs were his bread and butter, but his greatest love was large animals.

Alastair Campbell

When you ride fast and then rest for a bit, it causes a spike in your heart rate and helps your body deal with lactic acid. But you don't need to make it too complicated. Yorkshire is perfect because the hills work as intervals - you ride up them hard and then recover before the next one. Or you can just sprint to the next tree or lamppost.

Alistair Brownlee

We're proud Yorkshiremen: we grew up fell running, and we still do it whenever we can. I did my first fell race when I was 11. It was a Tuesday night race called the Bunny Run, on a windswept moor above Haworth, and the prize was a chocolate egg.

Alistair Brownlee

The school in the Yorkshire mining village in which my father grew up in the 1920s and 1930s allowed only a few children to go to high school, and my father was not one of them. He spent much of his time as a young man repairing this deprivation, mostly at night school.

Angus Deaton

I come from Beverley in East Yorkshire, and no one there would step outside their front door, or even their back door, on a Saturday night - or any other time, for that matter - unless they were dressed to the nines.

Anna Maxwell Martin

As a young girl, I was too intent on getting to London and drama school and out of east Yorkshire to think about winning Oscars. I did win a Bafta once, and was so unprepared for it I jabbered on for a minute - a minute too long.

Anna Maxwell Martin

I grew up in Yorkshire, and once or twice a year, we'd travel over the Pennines to see my cousins in Cheshire.

Anthony Browne

And roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is my personal signature dish.

Ben Elton

We fought big time fascists when I was knee high to a grasshopper up in Yorkshire, when I grew up I fought fascists in the West Midlands in the form of the National Front.

Betty Boothroyd

I was the youngest of four boys, raised in North Yorkshire.

Bob Mortimer

My father was a coal hewer from Goldthorpe, a coal-mining village in South Yorkshire. He played for the Yorkshire second team as an opening fast bowler - to me he was a gorgeously heroic man. He helped form a union and closed down the Barnsley seam because it was seeping gas, and saved many, many lives.

Brian Blessed

My dream is to own a Hockney - I'm a Yorkshireman, and his vibrant colours are a good example of how the north-country people are vibrant and colourful.

Brian Blessed

Whenever I go abroad, I never return home craving roast beef and Yorkshire pudding or fish and chips. Instead all I really want is a particularly good lamb dopiaza.

Chris Tarrant

I was painfully shy, so my aunt suggested to my mum that me and my brother go to Stage 84, a performing arts school in Yorkshire. I've probably romanticised it in my head, but I seem to remember that in the space of an hour's drama workshop, I was transformed. I went in really shy, and I came out full of confidence.

Christian Cooke

I also have two dogs, a Chihuahua and a Yorkshire terrier, so if they like him, that's a good sign.

Christina Milian

The whole of Yorkshire has been known throughout the world for various reasons, not least because of Wuthering Heights, but it was James Herriot I think that put Yorkshire on the international map and we are part of that, which is a great honor really.

Christopher Timothy

When you're a fledgling youth-type adult, it appears that all people in their 40s look old enough to be in a painting hanging on the wall of a stately home in England. It's not until you limp into your 70s that people in their 40s look too young to vote, and college cheerleaders closely resemble Yorkshire terriers.

Dan Jenkins

I was born in London 1947, after the war. A real wartime baby. I went to school in Brixton, and then I moved up to Yorkshire, which is in the north of England. I lived on the farms up there.

David Bowie

West Yorkshire is quite dramatic and beautiful, the crags and things.

David Hockney

East Yorkshire, to the uninitiated, just looks like a lot of little hills. But it does have these marvelous valleys that were caused by glaciers, not rivers. So it is unusual.

David Hockney