William Reginald Mitchell MBE (15 January 1928 – 7 October 2015) was a British writer who was the editor of Dalesman magazine for twenty years and over a sixty-year period wrote over 200 books, hundreds of articles, and delivered many talks on the history and physical and natural evolution of North Britain, with particular emphasis on the Yorkshire Dales, Lancashire and the Lake District.
In the course of his career Mitchell made and collected many taped interviews with people of these regions - now housed at the Universities of Leeds and Bradford - representing a unique archive of dialect and history.
[1] In 1943, aged 15, Bill Mitchell joined the 'Craven Herald' regional newspaper as a junior reporter.
[2] After national service at Royal Navy air stations, he returned to the newspaper, but in 1948 was asked by Harry J. Scott, editor of Dalesman, to join the staff of the magazine.
[3] From 1951, in addition to his work with Dalesman, Mitchell began editing 'Cumbria', a magazine that covered the Lake District area of England.
In the course of his journalistic work, he met and interviewed many people, which subsequently formed the basis for his feature articles and many of his later books.
Yorkshire Television marked his retirement with a programme about his life, narrated by Alan Bennett.
[4] Following his retirement, he established his own publishing company, 'Castleberg', from his home in Giggleswick, near Settle, North Yorkshire.
[5] In 1996 Mitchell was awarded the MBE for his services to journalism in Yorkshire and Cumbria, and received an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Bradford.
In April 2014, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Dalesman, he was voted no 33 in a poll to find the 75 Greatest Icons of Yorkshire.
He wrote a regular column in the Bradford 'Telegraph & Argus' newspaper for several years: 'Letter from the Dales'; he was also a regular contributor to the North Yorkshire 'Craven Herald' newspaper (History Pages); and had a monthly feature in the Dalesman:'Dalesfolk I Remember'(see Media Coverage links, below).
[7] The majority of Mitchell's cassette tapes of Dales life are deposited in the University of Leeds (Special Collections) library.
The University has a large collection of oral histories as part of The Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture (survey of English dialects).
These taped stories range from those told by the local gentry - such as the Dawsons of the Folly in Settle, and the Yorkes of Halton Place - to ordinary folk living in remote Dales communities.
They also present a record of different Dales accents and dialects used over forty years ago and which, because of greater social mobility, are less frequently heard today.
The Leeds Archive collection also features a selection of Bill Mitchell's printed works and correspondence with Lakeland residents, including the sculptor Josephina Banner de Vasconcellos.
The University of Bradford Library also has eight boxes of W R Mitchell material, including scrapbooks, correspondence and audio tapes.
In January 2012, Settle Stories received a £50,000 Heritage Lottery Fund grant to digitise a selection of the cassette tapes.
• Hollow mountains: The story of man's conquest of the caves and potholes of North-West Yorkshire throughout 10,000 years (1961 self-published, reprinted 1989 by Castleberg).
• Long Drag A Story Of Men Under Stress During The Construction Of The Settle - Carlisle Line (self published 1962).
• Settle Carlisle Centenary: 100 Years in Pictures of England's Highest Main Line Railway (with David Joy) (1975) Clapham (North Yorks.
• Cumbrian Blacksmith: Jonty Wilson of Kirkby Lonsdale (1979) Clapham (North Yorks.
• Life in the Lake District: Pictorial Memories of a Bygone Age (1980) Clapham (North Yorks.
• Its a Long Way to Muckle Flugga (1990) Souvenir Press Ltd • Ghosts of the Settle-Carlisle Railway (1990) Giggleswick: Castleberg.
• The Story of the Yorkshire Dales (1999) Chichester: Phillimore & Co. • Edith Carr: Life on Malham Moor (1999) Giggleswick: Castleberg.
• A History of Leeds (2000) Chichester: Phillimore & Co. • One Hundred Tales of the Settle to Carlisle Railway (2000) Giggleswick: Castleberg.
The Life and Times of Richard and Cherry Kearton,: Pioneers of Wildlife Photography (2001) Giggleswick: Castleberg.
• Bowland and Pendle Hill (2004) Chichester: Phillimore & Co. • Farm Life in the Lakeland Dales (2005) Weymouth: Waterfront Publications.
• The Eden Valley and North Pennines (2007) Chichester: Phillimore & Co. • James Herriot in conversation with WR Mitchell (2007) Giggleswick: Castleberg.
• The Lune Valley and the Howgill Fells: The Impact of the Second World War on British Children (2009) Chichester: Phillimore & Co. • Beatrix Potter: Her Lakeland Years (2010) Ilkley: Great Northern Books.