London & the South East

The Romans landed in Kent in AD 43 and founded Londinium at a bridging point on the Thames; Boudica's rebels burned it around AD 60, but it grew into the capital of Roman Britain behind a wall whose fragments still stand. After Rome, Kent became an Anglo-Saxon kingdom, and in 597 Augustine arrived from Rome and set up his church at Canterbury, which has been the seat of England's senior archbishop ever since. Winchester was rebuilt by Alfred the Great in the late 9th century.

In 1066 William of Normandy landed at Pevensey, defeated Harold near Hastings and built the White Tower in London and a castle at Windsor. Thomas Becket's murder in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 made the city a pilgrimage centre, immortalised in Chaucer's tales, and in 1215 King John sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede. Oxford's university was teaching by the late 11th century and grew into England's intellectual capital.

London survived plague and the Great Fire of 1666, after which Christopher Wren rebuilt St Paul's, and became the centre of a global empire and the largest city in the world in the 19th century. The South East's coast was England's front line: Portsmouth and Chatham built the navy, George IV made Brighton fashionable, and in 1940 the Battle of Britain was fought over south-east England while the Blitz struck London. Since the war the capital has been remade by immigration, the rise of the City as a financial centre and the 2012 Olympics.

London is one of the most diverse cities in the world, with hundreds of languages spoken and large Caribbean, South Asian, African, Irish, Polish and Turkish communities that shape its neighbourhoods, from Brixton and Southall to Brick Lane and Green Lanes. The old East End Cockney, with its rhyming slang and the Pearly Kings and Queens in button-covered suits, lives on more as memory than speech, while Estuary English has spread across the commuter belt.

The calendar mixes pageantry and street culture. Trooping the Colour and the State Opening of Parliament bring out the ceremonial monarchy; the Notting Hill Carnival fills west London with Caribbean music every August bank holiday; and the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race runs on the Thames each spring. Beyond the capital, summer means Royal Ascot in Berkshire, Henley Royal Regatta, Cowes Week on the Isle of Wight and opera at Glyndebourne in the Sussex countryside, while Lewes stages the UK's largest Bonfire Night, with its bonfire societies parading through the town and burning effigies.

Brighton has long been the UK's best-known gay-friendly city. Football rivalries run deep: Arsenal against Tottenham in north London, and Portsmouth against Southampton on the south coast. Oxford's colleges keep gowns, Latin graces and formal dinners.

London has about 9 million people and the wider South East around 9.5 million more, making this the most populous part of the UK. Beyond the capital the main centres are Southampton and Portsmouth, each with a couple of hundred thousand people, Brighton and Hove with about 280,000, Milton Keynes with about 260,000, Reading with about 200,000 and Oxford with about 165,000. Much of Surrey, Kent, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire is commuter country, its towns tied to London by rail.

The economy is the richest in the country: banking and insurance in the City and Canary Wharf, government, law, media, tech and the creative industries in London, research and biotech around Oxford, business parks along the M4 near Reading, and the ports of Southampton and Dover. Farming survives in the orchards and vineyards of Kent and Sussex.

Daily rhythm is set by the commute: packed early trains, long days and a pint after work. The dominant issue is the cost of housing, which pushes younger people further out of London each year, along with pressure on transport, schools and the NHS. In London the expanded clean-air zone and the new Elizabeth line, opened in 2022, have changed how people move around the city.

London eats the world, but its own traditions survive: pie and mash shops serving minced-beef pies with mashed potato and a green parsley sauce called liquor, jellied eels from the Thames, salt-beef bagels from the Jewish bakeries of Brick Lane, and the curry houses of the same street and of Southall. Borough Market by London Bridge is the city's great food market, and London dry gin takes its name from the capital.

Kent is called the Garden of England for its fruit orchards, and Whitstable has been known for its oysters since Roman times. Dover sole comes off the Channel coast, and the Isle of Wight grows garlic and tomatoes. From the Home Counties come Aylesbury duck, Eton mess — strawberries, broken meringue and cream — and Oxfordshire's Banbury cakes, flaky pastries filled with spiced currants. Sussex pond pudding is a suet pudding, boiled or steamed for hours, often with a whole lemon inside.

Kent, Sussex and Hampshire have become leading areas for English sparkling wine, with estates such as Nyetimber and Chapel Down, while Kentish ale, cider and the old breweries of London remain the everyday drinks.

London's sights run along the Thames: the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, St Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, the South Bank and Tate Modern, Shakespeare's Globe, and Greenwich with its observatory and the Cutty Sark. The British Museum, the National Gallery, the V&A and the Natural History Museum are free, and the royal parks and Kew Gardens give green space.

West of the capital, Windsor Castle stands above the river opposite Eton, and Oxford has the Bodleian Library, the Radcliffe Camera, Christ Church and the Ashmolean Museum, with Blenheim Palace at nearby Woodstock. Kent holds Canterbury Cathedral and the city's medieval walls, Leeds Castle, the garden at Sissinghurst, and the white cliffs and castle at Dover.

Along the Sussex coast, Brighton has the Royal Pavilion, George IV's Indian-style palace, the Palace Pier and the Lanes, and the South Downs National Park runs behind it over chalk hills to the Seven Sisters cliffs and Beachy Head. Battle Abbey marks the site of 1066. In Hampshire, Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard holds HMS Victory and the Mary Rose, Winchester has its long cathedral, and the New Forest National Park has heath, ancient woodland and free-roaming ponies. Across the Solent, the Isle of Wight offers the chalk stacks of the Needles, Queen Victoria's Osborne House and the sailing town of Cowes.