These words were written by William Clark Russell, a Victorian mariner turned writer who knew something about living on edges, geographically as well as socially. Russell's Tyneside was just such a place on the margin, oriented toward shipping and maritime trade, sometimes seeming only vaguely connected to the land-based nation-state behind it, and the subject of much metropolitan ignorance and condescension. Being peripheral and being different are common themes in studies of the North East more generally, whether approached from a historical perspective or from those of the social sciences in assessing more contemporary policy issues. At the time of writing, the North East is widely regarded as the most clearly defined and self-aware of the English regions, thanks largely to its isolation from other clusters of population, and a cultural exceptionalism rooted in the rise and decline of heavy industry.

As a result, the North East was also, from the mid-1990s, top of the Labour Party's priority list for the creation of a devolved regional assembly.