Home Truths: A Jaunt Around the Decaying Heart of England

This text documents, with humour, the irreversible destruction that has occurred across much of Urban England and the English countryside, and the effects this has had on its people. Murphy has gone out into the provinces and painted a picture of just how dreadful England has become. He began early in 1999 and spent a gruelling eight months examining over 30 English towns and cities which his research had suggested would stand up to the charge of "decay." None of them let him down.

Table of Contents:
Braintree - the ugliest collection of people in the UK outside Wales; Southport - so dead, not even the sea turns up anymore; Woking - built to service the Brookwood cemetery; Slough - there are some places which have always been dreadful - Slough is one of them; Haverhill - a tidal wave of unmarried mothers; Norwich - genetically modified inhabitants; Huntingdon - a people who aspire to the forces of mediocrity; St Ives - a perfect example of a local council's criminal environmental damage; barge round the Midlands - I wondered what was concealed beneath the grimy surface; Brighton - if you ever want an excuse for not paying taxes, come to the Costa del Dole, or Brighton; Macclesfield - Macclesfield man drinks until the women become attractive; Romford - "more villainies than England ever knew" - The Ballad of Captain Blood; Watford - a frightened town; Stevenage - a nice place if you like hideous architecture and don't mind getting beaten up; High Wycombe - even the yobs are pretentious, using golf clubs rather than baseball bats as weapons; Gravesend - like so many English seaside towns, Gravesend is not an obviously beautiful place; Southampton - the city that is "Leading the South" - where - into the English Channel?; A heart of England rail pass; Gloucester - if there was ever anything good to say about Gloucester, it's dead and buried now; Cheltenham - where?; Stoke - no sense of humour and the night life is shit - unless you're a prostitute; Derby - decay, dressed up as modernisation; Sheffield - vandalism, drug-dealing and teenage pregnancy are a way of life; Harrogate - "if Harrogate ever had life, it was dead now" - paraphrased quote from Withnail & I; Maidstone - instead of an imposing cathedral, Maidstone has an imposing prison; Lincoln - its slogan should be Caveat Emptor; Luton - it is such a rotten place, even the locals have nothing to say in its favour; Darlington - incredibly loose women; Gateshead - a crowded valley of deceased industry across the Tyne river from Newcastle.