East Midlands

The Romans built Lindum, today's Lincoln, as a legionary fortress and then a colony for veterans; its Newport Arch is still in use as a road gate. After Rome, most of the region became part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, then fell to the Danes in the 9th century. Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford became the Five Boroughs of the Danelaw, and Danish place names ending in "-by" and "-thorpe" still cover the map.

After 1066 the Normans built castles at Nottingham and Lincoln, and Lincoln's cathedral, completed in the Middle Ages, was for centuries thought to be the tallest building in the world, until its central spire fell in 1548. Wool made Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire towns rich. In 1485 Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in Leicestershire, ending the Wars of the Roses, and in 1642 Charles I raised his standard at Nottingham, starting the Civil War.

The region was a cradle of industry. Richard Arkwright's water-powered cotton mill at Cromford in Derbyshire, opened in 1771, became a model for the factory system, and the Derwent Valley Mills are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Nottingham grew on lace and stockings, where framework knitters smashed machines in the Luddite protests of 1811, and later on Boots, Raleigh bicycles and tobacco. Coal mining dominated Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire until the pit closures of the 1980s and 1990s. From the 1960s Leicester became home to large numbers of Gujarati Indians, many arriving from East Africa.

The East Midlands often feels overlooked, neither North nor South, and locals are known for a dry, modest humour. The accent is its own, and "ey up me duck" is a familiar greeting in Nottingham and Derby. Robin Hood is Nottingham's great legend, with the Sheriff of Nottingham as the villain, and the city is also associated with the writer D. H. Lawrence, born in nearby Eastwood, and Lord Byron, whose family home was Newstead Abbey.

Leicester is one of Britain's most diverse cities, and its Diwali celebrations on Belgrave Road draw very large crowds. The city's discovery of Richard III's skeleton in 2012 and his reburial in 2015 became a national event. Nottingham's Goose Fair, a travelling fair held each October, dates back centuries.

In Derbyshire's villages, the custom of well dressing — decorating wells and springs with pictures made of petals and seeds pressed into clay — takes place through the summer. Isaac Newton was born at Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire, and the county's farming and RAF heritage, as "Bomber County" in the Second World War, shape its identity. Football pride ran high when Leicester City won the Premier League in 2016, and Nottingham Forest's two European Cups are still remembered.

About 4.9 million people live in the East Midlands. Leicester is the largest city, with about 370,000 people, followed by Nottingham, with about 320,000 within its tight boundaries, Derby, with about 260,000, and Northampton. Lincoln has about 100,000 people, and Chesterfield, Mansfield, Loughborough and Grantham are the other main towns. Rutland, with its towns of Oakham and Uppingham, is tiny.

The economy is more industrial than most of the UK. Derby is home to Rolls-Royce's aero engine works and a large Toyota plant nearby, and has a long railway engineering history. Nottingham has Boots, universities and services; Leicester has food and textile firms; and the M1 corridor is lined with warehouses and distribution centres. Lincolnshire is farming country, growing much of the UK's vegetables and flowers, and its coast depends on seaside tourism at Skegness.

The former coalfield towns still struggle with the loss of mining jobs and poorer health, and the pay gap with the South is a local issue. Nottingham and Leicester have large student populations that shape their city centres.

The East Midlands has produced several of England's best-known foods. Stilton, the blue cheese, has protected status and can only be made in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, and Red Leicester is the county's orange cheese. Melton Mowbray gives its name to the pork pie, with its hand-raised pastry and uncured pork, which also has protected status, and the town calls itself a rural food capital.

Derbyshire's Bakewell pudding is a flaky pastry case with jam and a rich egg and almond filling, different from the iced Bakewell tart sold across Britain. Lincolnshire is known for its sausages flavoured with sage, haslet, a pork meat loaf, stuffed chine, a salt pork chine stuffed with herbs, and Lincolnshire plum bread, a fruit loaf. Grantham gingerbread is a pale biscuit with a hollow, honeycomb-like centre, and the Bramley apple, the classic cooking apple, grew from a seedling in Southwell, Nottinghamshire.

Beer is brewed widely, with Batemans in Wainfleet in Lincolnshire among the older family breweries. Farm shops across Derbyshire and Leicestershire, as well as Nottingham's and Leicester's South Asian restaurants and sweet shops, show the region's range.

The Peak District, Britain's first national park, fills north-west Derbyshire. The Dark Peak has the gritstone moors of Kinder Scout, where a mass trespass in 1932 helped win access to open land, and the Great Ridge from Mam Tor above Edale. The White Peak has limestone dales such as Dovedale, on the Staffordshire border, the show caves of Castleton, and the spa towns of Buxton and Matlock Bath. Chatsworth, the seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, stands in parkland on the Derwent near Bakewell, with Haddon Hall and Hardwick Hall close by.

Nottingham has its castle, the caves carved into its sandstone and the old Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem inn below the castle rock. North of the city, Sherwood Forest has the Major Oak near Edwinstowe, with Newstead Abbey, Southwell Minster and the Ice Age cave art of Creswell Crags nearby.

Lincoln has its cathedral, castle and cobbled Steep Hill, and Lincolnshire offers the Wolds, Stamford's stone streets, Boston's tall church tower known as the Stump, and the Skegness coast. Leicester has Richard III's tomb and visitor centre, the National Space Centre and the Bosworth battlefield outside the city. Rutland Water, with its ospreys and Normanton Church on its embankment at the water's edge, lies near Oakham, and Cromford's mills lie in the Derwent Valley.