The Essex Way

In the last programme in a series celebrating the joys of Essex, surely the most maligned of counties, writer Gillian Darley explores the unsung delights of mid-Essex, with a trip along the Essex Way.Known recently for the pneumonic blondes and diamond geezers of television's The Only Way Is Essex, as well as the peroxided 'Essex Girls' of the 80s, Essex seems to have an image problem. John Betjeman called it 'a stronger contrast of beauty and ugliness than any other southern English county'. This series explores the contrasts of this boundary county, this interzone, which has become a parody of itself.Reader and writer: Gillian Darley is the author of Excellent Essex. She is a writer, broadcaster and architectural campaigner, with an OBE for her services to the Built Environment and its Conservation. Producer: Justine Willett