England's most misunderstood county.

My mother is the youngest of three sisters who moved out to Essex after the Second World War, my mother and her eldest sister to live in Harlow new town, while Iris settled in the Brentwood area. But Essex is not homogeneous, as Gillian Darley reminds us in her absorbing and gracefully written book, Excellent Essex (Old Street Publishing). She visits the new towns of Harlow and Basildon, created by the Attlee government after the war, and introduces us to the historic buildings and settlements of Epping Forest. [Extracted from the article]

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