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Supposedly the soft and affluent part of England,
though it has certainly not always been so. Read Hardy to realise just
how tough it was as the Industrial Revolution tore the rural communities
apart. Even today there are villages where the wealth of the South has
somehow passed by and there is a huge gulf between the rich incomers and the
locals. It can be exceptionally beautiful, though I am slightly biased
having grown up on the fringes of what was Berkshire and is now Oxfordshire;
apparently nobody really wants to own the backwater that is the Vale of the
White Horse. At the other extreme is the
rat-race of the all-embracing Metropolitan commuter belt, London like a
black hole, sucking life and energy from the region. In between, the
cultural centre of the Universe, Oxford, with centuries of stunning
architecture and the beautiful Cotswolds, charming, romantic and
surprisingly quiet despite their proximity to the capital. |
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