A review by schopflin
The Invention of Essex: The Making of an English County by Tim Burrows

medium-paced

4.0

I enjoyed this but it has in common with many of this type of book that it observes things about a place and makes a case for the place being exceptional, when those things are characteristic, not unique. It's very much a personal view - not the book Owen Hatherley would have written, or that Gillian Darley did. It gets particularly murky on the issue of house prices and gentrification.  But then that's never going to offer up simple answers. Still, I learned many things and it was fun to spend so much time exploring Estuary and London suburban Essex. He doesn't write so much about the rest of the County, but that's part of the personal approach.