The most easterly part of England. The region is made up of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk (indisputably), is sometimes taken to include Cambridgeshire as well, and is occasionally regarded as including northern parts of neighbouring Essex.
note The name East Anglia derives from one of the kingdoms that ruled over parts of England: it was the Eastern major kingdom of the tribe of the Angles (the other major Angle kingdoms being Mercia and Northumbria). This kingdom was later united with Essex, the eastern kingdom of the Saxons (the other major Saxon kingdoms being Wessex, Sussex, and Kent), as tribal distinctions blurred and turned to a common English identity. However, true to the lovely English tendency of messing around with history, a paper called the East Anglian Daily Times also serves the area around Colchester near Essex's border with Suffolk. Sometimes (especially on the internet) the region is confused with the East of England as a whole. It is mostly rural apart from the cities of Norwich, Cambridge and Peterbough, as well as several towns such as Ipswich.
- Norfolk: Although home to two large shopping centres, several live music venues and one the largest universities in England, the University of East Anglia. Norwich and Norfolk in general are often (rather unfairly) stereotyped as being at best remote, unsophisticated and out of step with national trends, even by East Anglian standards; and at worst, incestuous and almost medieval – the closest American Cultural Translation might be the more exaggerated depictions of the Deep South. This 'otherness' is humorously acknowledged by the inhabitants, who have an old and self-deprecating saying: someone or something is "normal for Norfolk". Norfolk's main towns include:
- Norwich with a population of about 200,000 Norwich is the largest city in both Norfolk and East Anglia. It is Norfolks county town and shares many of Norfolk's stereotypes.
- Great Yarmouth which is an old seaside resort town situated on the east coast slightly north of Lowestoft.
- King's Lynn which is a medium sized town situated slightly outside the fens and just south of the Wash which is a roughly square shaped bay fed by four rivers.
- Thetford is a small town near Thetford forest which is one of England's largest forests.
- Suffolk: One of the few English counties without a motorway or a city (Ipswich lacks city status). The county also used to lack a university until the opening of University Campus Suffolk in 2007. The county has four main towns:
- Ipswich the largest and county town and is the traditional rival of Norwich (Norfolk's county town which is slightly larger and has city status).
- Lowestoft which is an old seaside resort town situated on the east coast slightly south of Great Yarmouth.
- Bury St Edmunds a medium sized town named after St Edmund an East Anglian king who was martyred fighting the Danes after he refused to renounce Christ.
- Felixstowe which is Britains largest container port as well as a small town.
- Huntingdonshire: One of England's smallest counties and now a district in Cambridgeshire. The county town of Huntingdon is where Oliver Cromwell was from.
- Peterborough, in Cambridgeshire (previously Northamptonshire), is supposedly the gateway to East Anglia, an area of Britain bypassed by the Industrial Revolution, which has no motorways, and which operates in an entirely different time zone. The city has been important since the middle ages (having gained city statues in 1541) but expanded greatly in the 1960s after being designated a new town and the city remains one of the country's fastest growing.
- Cambridge is home to one of the world's oldest and most famous universities, which is equally famous for its long-standing rivalry with Oxford; nonetheless, the two are frequently conflated into one big 'Oxbridge' whole by outsiders.
- Fenland or The Fens is a an area which crosses the Norfolk and Cambridgeshire boundary. It was previously marshland but was drained late 1700s and early 1800s and is now some of the most fertile farmland in the country and is exceptionally flat. Most of the areas towns are built on high land which formed islands in the marsh the most notable of these towns is Wisbech and the city of Ely. The area is also home to a large eastern European population who recently immigrated there to work on the land after a number of eastern European countries joined The European Union. As a result the area is more pro-UKIP than most of the rest of the UK and the Fenland town of Ramsey became the first town council to be run by UKIP.
- The Broads is a national park which crosses the boundary of Norfolk and Suffolk. The area was previously mined for peat which was used as fuel. Sea levels rose and during the middle ages the area flooded forming what is now known as the Broads a network of navigable rivers and lakes.
In fiction
- Kingdom was set in the fictional Norfolk seaside town of Market Shipborough. It was also actually filmed in various locations across the county—thus the extensive Norfolk Scenery Porn.
- Given this, it's hardly surprising that Stephen Fry is from Norfolk (raised in a village outside Reepham).
- Dinosaur Planet is also set in Norfolk.
- The UK version of Sale of the Century, produced by the local ITV company Anglia Television, used to open each show with the ambitious but underwhelming pronouncement "Live from Norwich, it's the Quiz Of The Week!"
- Where the main character of I'm Alan Partridge was supposed to have been born.
