¨As a linguist and historian, I’ve always been fascinated by words and phrases. I am particularly interested in how certain idioms and expressions come to be picked up, where they originated and what, if any, history lies behind their origins. It was this interest that led me in 2018 to consider writing a paper on the dialect, idioms, and aphorisms used by people in my hometown. It was also what led the kid known as Skit to spend a night ‘Alone with The Devil’.

In the small rural town where I grew up, in the hills of Northern England, the phrase “Alone with the Devil” is a very common one. It's a quaint, if mildly sinister, little idiom that if you stick around town long enough, you’re almost certain to hear.¨