South East of England

The counties of the South West are, from east to west and clockwise:
Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Surrey, Middlesex (a former county but now part of the Greater London), the Royal County of Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Greater London.

The South East is not larger in size than other regions, but it has a higher number of counties. The counties that surround London are called "home counties".

The Royal County of Berkshire is so called for the presence of the royal residence of Windsor Castle in the county.

The South East is the region of England which contains London (pictured right: Tower Bridge) and, maybe because it's the closest to the continent of Europe, it is the most developed culturally and economically.

It is here, after all, that the Romans first landed in Britain, on the Kentish coast near Sandwich, where there is still a plaque on the beach to remember Caesar's legions landing on these shores.
It is here that the Romans later founded, on the banks of the river Thames, Londinium, which was to become the capital of this province.

The South East is the dominant area of England and indeed of the British Isles, for population size, level of wealth, cosmopolitan sophistication.
It is the most expensive area to live in, and the one that attracts most people from other parts of the country. It is also the most rapidly growing region, despite planning controls directed toward restricting its growth, such as the so-called greenbelt to prevent or regulate building around London. You don't find in the South East many derelict areas or boarded up buildings as you may find elsewhere, because everything is instantly re-developed.

London itself is a victim of urban sprawl that has been checked too late.
The Greater London is sometimes almost impossible to define, due to its recent expansion in the fashion of an oil pool.
To delimit the area covered by it, a reference often used is the M25, the motorway ring-road which, surrounding the city in its circular embrace, offers a boundary by tacit convention.

London hosts the administrative headquarters not just of Britain's government but also of many of the country's financial, commercial, industrial enterprises. The area as a whole has an extensive range of manufacturing industry (brewing, clothing, furniture, and printing). Since the transportation systems have improved, retailing, advertising, service and high-technology industries, and nuclear and space research facilities are gradually moving to the counties outside London.

A greenbelt policy has slowed down the expansion of London, and the region as a whole still has one-third of its area devoted to farming or horticulture. Not coincidentally, the county of Kent is called "the garden of England" and growing hops to make beer is so common there that oast-houses are disseminated all around its landscape.

One of the most notable features of the South East is how different a county is to the next.
For example, Kent is very rural, whereas Surrey next door has a completely different, suburban face. The so-called commuter belt is just another extension of London in the home counties.

London is the focus of the national transport system. The country's mainline railway network is based on the London termini. London is served by five airports: two major international airports at Heathrow (where the national airlines fly) and Gatwick, a third international airport at Stansted in Essex specialised in the increasingly popular low-cost flights and no-frills airlines, Luton Airport at Luton in Bedfordshire, and the City Airport.
The Port of London is the largest and commercially most important in the UK.

Eight new towns have been established in the South East, the most famous (or notorious) of which is Milton Keynes, the town of the roundabouts.
In addition, four existing towns have been expanded to take the overflow of London population.

London is the cultural capital of Britain: art galleries, museums, libraries, theatres, concert halls, music venues, literary circles, scientific institutions, auction houses and many others are numerous here.

But South East England is not just London. It is also coastlines, cultural cities, gently rolling countryside, historical villages.
Among its attractions are: Brighton, Oxford, Canterbury, the Isle of Wight (pictured right: The Needles), Kent (Garden of England), the Cotswold Hills, Reading, Windsor Castle, the River Thames valley (pictured above: Goring Gap), Winchester, the New Forest, Chichester, Lewes, Marlow, Henley, St. Albans, Portsmouth, Eastbourne, Beachy Head, the South Downs range of hills, Guildford, High Wycombe, Tunbridge Wells, Hastings, Bognor Regis, Dover, Southampton.

The people of the South East perhaps do not have a strong sense of regional identity. The Sussex Downs and the Bedfordshire plain or Oxford and Canterbury do not have not much in common except one thing: they are all within the magnetic pull of London. There are more loyalties to individual towns, and traditional rivalries between them. As for Londoners, they feel they belong to neighbourhoods, like Chelsea or Hampstead, Greenwich or Primrose Hill, which become urban villages and are often called that, rather than to the metropolis as a whole.