Chelmsford

Chelmsford hosted Britain's first publicised radio broadcast and now raises commuters who listen to podcasts on the train to Liverpool Street. Dickens called it the dullest and most stupid place on earth because he couldn't find a Sunday newspaper, a review that says more about Dickens than about the town, though nobody here has ever bothered to fight it. It became a city in 2012 and carried on behaving like an efficient county town with a good station, which is precisely what the people buying here are paying for. The council switches most of the street lights off at one in the morning, on the fair assumption that anyone still out has made their own choices.