My parents are from the North East of England, and that is where I have lived for most of my life; however, I spent all of my childhood in the South West - and for a long time I was not able to see a link between the two diagonally-opposite regions!
But I later discovered that they were both on the King's side during the English Civil War:
As a teenaged socialist I (of course!) sided with the Parliamentarian 'Roundheads' and Oliver Cromwell - but I soon grew to see the error of my ways, and have been a Royalist-Cavalier sympathizer for my mature adult life; and since I became a Christian I have acknowledged King Charles the First as a Holy Martyr.
Clearly, English geography has had a deep and lasting influence...
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