Excellent Essex

Just finished reading a Christmas gift of Excellent Essex by Gillian Darley. There's some brilliant research in this tome, although the sub-title, "In praise of England's most misunderstood county" doesn't really reflect the content; Essex Man and the Towie phenomenon get just half a dozen pages and there's no real discussion about the validity or not of these stereotypes.

This is much more a Radio 4 version of Essex. Darley grew up in Sudbury on the Essex/Suffolk border and seemingly prefers the old villages of north Essex to estuary Essex. She is mainly an architectural journalist and Excellent Essex is full of info on interesting buildings and intriguing historical facts. You can dip into this book and find details of Tolstoyian communities in Purleigh, bohemian artists in Great Bardfield and Frank Crittall's windows and modernist homes in Silver End. 

She's also very good on the history of Butlin's in Clacton, Bata at Tilbury, plotland developments like Basildon and Jaywick and the development of new towns at Harlow, Basildon and South Woodham Ferrers. Essex has always been a haven for the slightly different stresses Darley, from mechanical elephants in Thaxted to cheetahs at Romford dogtrack, suffragettes in Great Baddow and Grayson Perry's A House for Essex on the Stour. The index stretches from the A12 and Robert Adam to Wrabness and Zeppelins. There should be something for everyone here.