The most typical place in Britain is Basildon

Basildon, a town about 40km to the east of London, was supposed to be a Utopia. In 1948 Lewis Silkin, the then minister for town-and-country planning, proclaimed that “Basildon will become a city which people from all over the world will want to visit”. Seventy-five years later those hoped-for visitors from around the globe have failed to arrive—and standing in the town centre on a windy and wet October day, it is hard to imagine why any would choose to come here.