In the next in a series exploring the joys of Essex, surely the most maligned and misunderstood of counties, writer and poet Lavinia Greenlaw takes us back to the formative landscape of her childhood - a place that she rejected for so long...

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: Lavinia Greenlaw is an acclaimed poet and novelist.