There’s no place quite like Excellent Essex

Those who think Essex is boring, or a human waste bin into which only the most meretricious people find themselves tipped, would require only one or two chapters of Gillian Darley’s widely researched book to tell them how wrong they are. Essex has experienced various types and degrees of civilisation since before the Romans arrived and did unspeakable things to Boadicea and her daughters, as the Queen of the Iceni chased them in her chariot up and down what is now the A12.

In the last century it has seen, at least in its districts closest to London, a huge influx from the East End; it has housed great industries such as Courtauld’s, Crittall Windows, Marconi and Wilkin & Son’s jam; it has harboured two New Towns that represented one of the most profound social experiments in British history, in Harlow and Basildon. It has become a byword for vulgarity and conspicuous consumption; and yet it still contains some of the finest countryside and villages in England, and some of the most bewitching coastline.