History UsefulNotes / EastAnglia

The flip side of this is that, although home to two large shopping centres, several live music venues and one of the largest universities in England, Norfolk's county town Norwich and the county in general are often (rather unfairly) stereotyped as being at best remote, agricultural, unsophisticated and out of step with national trends, even by East Anglian standards. At worst, the portrait is of somewhere incestuous and almost medieval[[note]](it has to be said, not entirely inaccurately: [[UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain the Industrial Revolution]] pretty much left the entire county behind; on the positive side, the likes of Norwich were left relatively unscathed by the financial crash in 2008 because of its more secluded/less interdependent nature and the presence of large local firms like Aviva in the city)[[/note]] -- the closest American CulturalTranslation might be the more exaggerated depictions of the DeepSouth.[[note]](Which is ironic, since East Anglia was the main source of the Puritan migration to New England, whose descendants in turn settled much of the northern tier of the US and extended into Northern California. In other words, the culture that East Anglian migrants established in America is the polar opposite of the Deep South!)[[/note]] This 'otherness' is humorously acknowledged by the inhabitants, who have an old and self-deprecating saying that someone or something a little 'off' is "normal for Norfolk". Allegedly, hospital doctors would add ''NFN'' to local patients' notes as a discreet way of saying that the patient wasn't suffering from brain damage, they were just naturally like that...

* The [[TransatlanticEquivalent UK version]] of ''Series/SaleOfTheCentury'', produced by the local Creator/{{ITV}} company [[NameDrop Anglia Television]], used to open each show with the expansive-but-underwhelming pronouncement "Live from Norwich, it's the ''Quiz Of The Week''!"[[note]](Anglia TV themselves were recognized for their famous [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u02ZP0TiNU logo]], a sterling silver statue of a knight on horseback, rotating and carrying a lance with the "Anglia" name emblazoned on the pennant; it was retired in 1988 in favor of a new "flag" [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_uX_z1zbSs logo]], where east-facing triangles are arranged to form an abstract "A", with the animation showing the flag forming from different segments; it was eliminated in 1999 for the various ITV generic looks.)[[/note]] The intro was spoofed in the radio comedy show ''Radio/TheBurkissWay'' for its provincialism:

* Ipswich -- The largest settlement, historic port and county town, and the traditional rival of Norwich (which is slightly larger and has city status) -- not least in [[UsefulNotes/TheBeautifulGame footballing]] terms. Its Both the England national football team's most successful managers Sir Alf Ramsey and Sir Bobby Robson formerly managed Ipswich Town[[note]](see UsefulNotes/EnglishPremierLeague for more details on the club and on Norwich City FC)[[/note]], winning respectively the Football League (Ramsey) and the FA Cup and UEFA Cup (Robson) during their remarkable spells in charge of an otherwise modest provincial club. Various surveys suggest Ipswich is one of England's cleanest, happiest and most desirable places to live. With continuous settlement since early in the Anglo-Saxon era, it is claimed to be the oldest extant town to have been established and developed by the 'English'. Its historical status centred around its docks, which from medieval times were among the most important in the kingdom as the route of much trade with the Continent.

* Felixstowe -- A small coastal town that also happens to boast Britain's largest container port, one of the busiest in Europe, which deals with nearly half of the country's containerised shipping trade. It was also an important wartime naval base, and indeed Landguard Fort outside the town was the site of the last opposed seaborne invasion of England back in 1667 when a Dutch force was repulsed in the first ever land engagement of what became the [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships Royal Marines]]. Three centuries later though, and three years before the first shipping terminal opened in 1967, however, the sea off Felixstowe was notable in a different way as at Easter 1964 BuccaneerBroadcaster Radio Caroline became the first 'pirate radio' ship in the North Sea to go on air in an attempt to break Creator/TheBBC's monopoly.

* Great Yarmouth -- Norfolk's most significant seaside resort, situated on the east coast slightly north of its 'twin' Lowestoft the other side of the Suffolk county boundary. Commonly referred to as just Yarmouth (the "Great" is to distinguish it from another Yarmouth on the UsefulNotes/IsleOfWight), it is known for its 'Golden Mile' of seafront and sandy beaches, amusement arcades and two piers. Alas now somewhat run-down in common with many other such British seaside destinations whose heyday was the mid-20th century. Much of the historic town survives despite it suffering serious damage from the Luftwaffe during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII as the last significant place Germans could drop bombs before returning home.

Either way, East Anglia covers a sizeable area, yet it does not occupy a large niche in British popular imagination or culture -- summed up by, if nothing else, Creator/NoelCoward's memorable epithet ''"Very flat, Norfolk"''. The region is indeed known for its big skies and wide horizons, unimpeded by much in the way of either dramatic terrain or urban development; the western and northern parts of Norfolk in particular are very, well... flat, and the county's highest point is just 103m (338ft) above sea level. East Anglia is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the [[UsefulNotes/{{Tornadoes}} tornado]] capital of the British Isles. In character it is more akin in many ways to those parts of UsefulNotes/TheNetherlands directly across from it on the opposite coast of the North Sea, than it is to most of the rest of England. Immediately inland from the great bay of The Wash the land is especially low-lying and often marshy; these are the Fens of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, which historically -- before centuries of drainage and reclamation -- helped cut East Anglia off from the rest of Britain still further.

The most easterly part of England and UsefulNotes/{{Britain}}, made up of the counties of (indisputably) Norfolk and Suffolk, which occupy a large cape sticking out into the North Sea to the northeast of UsefulNotes/{{London}}. It is sometimes taken to include Cambridgeshire as well, which borders both counties to their west, and is occasionally regarded as including northern parts of Essex that lie adjacent to Suffolk.[[note]](Ancestrally, the name 'East '''Anglia'''' denoted one of the kingdoms of the '''Angles''' that ruled over parts of England, whereas Es'''sex''' was the separate East '''Saxon''' tribes' kingdom -- the other major Saxon kingdoms were [[UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry Wessex]], [[UsefulNotes/HomeCounties Sussex, and Kent]] -- but later on tribal distinctions blurred and turned to a common [[UsefulNotes/AngloSaxons Anglo-Saxon]] and eventually English identity. For instance, a newspaper called the ''East Anglian Daily Times'' serves the area around Colchester, in originally-Saxon Essex.)[[/note]] Sometimes (especially on the internet) the region is confused with the east of England as a whole.

Whether Essex belongs in East Anglia - as it undeniably does, geographically - or should be considered one of the UsefulNotes/HomeCounties, or as a post-War expansion of Greater London, is an ongoing debate. More details about Essex will be found on the UsefulNotes/HomeCounties page.

East Anglia covers a sizeable area, yet does not occupy a large niche in British popular imagination or culture -- summed up by, if nothing else, Creator/NoelCoward's memorable epithet ''"Very flat, Norfolk"''. The region is indeed known for its big skies and wide horizons, unimpeded by much in the way of either dramatic terrain or urban development; the western and northern parts of Norfolk in particular are very low-lying and the county's highest point is just 103m (338ft) above sea level. East Anglia is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the [[UsefulNotes/{{Tornadoes}} tornado]] capital of the British Isles. In character it is more akin in many ways to UsefulNotes/TheNetherlands, directly across from it on the other side of the North Sea, than it is to most of the rest of England. Immediately inland from the great bay of The Wash the land is particularly flat, low-lying and often marshy; these are the Fens of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, which historically -- before centuries of drainage and reclamation -- helped cut East Anglia off from the rest of Britain still further.

It is even today a mostly rural part of the country and relatively sparsely-populated: Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire rank respectively 5th, 8th and 15th among England's 48 ceremonial counties by size, but only 25th, 32nd and 28th in population. The exceptions are the cities of Norwich, Cambridge and Peterborough, plus several towns such as Ipswich, King's Lynn, Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft and Bury St Edmunds. The [[UsefulNotes/BritishAccents local accents]] form part of what might be called (cruelly) a "Yokel Belt" stretching across southern England from Cornwall to Norfolk, featuring a generally common sort of drawl -- meaning the uninitiated (or even experienced actors) attempting to do an East Anglian accent will tend to fall into West Country dialect, despite the fact that they really don't sound similar.

The joint isolation that Norfolk and Suffolk occupy from the rest of the country breeds something like a close sibling relationship, with a sometimes friendly, sometimes simmering rivalry between two counties more similar than they'd perhaps like to admit. Notably this is mirrored on the UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball pitch, where unusually for English counties of such size they have just one professional team apiece[[note]](unlike even neighbouring Cambridgeshire, which has both Peterborough Town and Cambridge United, or Essex which has both Colchester United and Southend United)[[/note]] and thus although 40 miles/64 km apart Norwich City FC and Ipswich Town FC engage in what is surely the longest-distance 'local' rivalry in England -- each club to a substantial degree representing their whole county as much as merely their town.

East Anglia derives its name from its status in the [[DarkAgeEurope Dark Ages]], when it was the eastern major kingdom[[note]](the other major ones being [[UsefulNotes/TheMidlands Mercia]] and [[OopNorth Northumbria]])[[/note]] of the [[UsefulNotes/AngloSaxons Angles]], one of the Germanic tribes that invaded Britain after [[UsefulNotes/TheMigrationPeriod the Romans withdrew in the fifth century]] and who also ultimately gave their name to England (''Angle-land'') as a whole. Archaeological evidence suggests that East Anglia experienced the earliest settlement by these people, meaning that the area actually has a fairly strong claim to being the first place in the world where [Old] 'English' was spoken. Oh, and back when it was a kingdom, the East Angles living there were divided into the "north folk" and "south folk." Guess what those names became?

[-'''''Notes on pronunciation:'''''-]

** ''Norfolk and Suffolk are pronounced to rhyme with 'book' not with 'yolk', i.e. "[=NORfook=]" and "[=SUHfook=]".''
** ''The first 'o' in Norfolk is long, as in the word 'nor'; the 'o' in Norwich however is short, as in 'not'.''
** ''Ipswich is pronounced as it looks ("[=IPswitch=]") but the 'w' in Norwich is dropped: "[=NORRitch=]" or, locally, "[=NAHHRidge=]".''
** ''Cambridge is pronounced "[=CAMEbridge=]", but it sits on the River Cam... which is said just as it looks.''
** ''Cambridgeshire, in common with other British counties ending in -shire, has its last syllable pronounced "-shuh" or "-sheer", never actually "shire".''
** ''Peterborough, in common with other British places with similar endings, has '-borough' said as "-burruh", never "burrow" or "borrow".''

There is a certain feel to Norfolk of a place 'out of time'. Although it is within easy striking distance of London, there are no 'M'-class motorways in the county and it mostly remains off the beaten track -- its liminal location in the great flat bulge of East Anglia, surrounded on two sides by the North Sea and additionally separated at its northwestern corner from UsefulNotes/TheMidlands by a roughly square-shaped bay of about 15 miles (25km) per side known as The Wash, means you can't go through it on the way to anywhere else. It does carry a palpable sense of history: there are for instance over 650 churches built in TheMiddleAges still standing in the county, by far the highest tally in England and the greatest such concentration in the world.

The flip side of this is that, although home to two large shopping centres, several live music venues and one of the largest universities in England, Norfolk's county town Norwich and the county in general are often (rather unfairly) stereotyped as being at best remote, agricultural, unsophisticated and out of step with national trends, even by East Anglian standards. At worst, the portrait is of somewhere incestuous and almost medieval[[note]](it has to be said, not entirely inaccurately: [[UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain the Industrial Revolution]] pretty much left the entire county behind; on the positive side, the likes of Norwich were left relatively unscathed by the financial crash in 2008 because of its more secluded/less interdependent nature and the presence of large local firms like Aviva in the city)[[/note]] -- the closest American CulturalTranslation might be the more exaggerated depictions of the DeepSouth.[[note]](Which is ironic, since East Anglia was the main source of the Puritan migration to New England... whose descendants in turn settled much of the northern tier of the US, and extended into Northern California. In other words, the culture that East Anglian migrants established in America is the polar opposite of the Deep South!)[[/note]] This 'otherness' is humorously acknowledged by the inhabitants, who have an old and self-deprecating saying that someone or something a little 'off' is ''"normal for Norfolk"''.[[note]](Allegedly, hospital doctors would add "NFN" to local patients' notes as a discreet way of saying that the patient wasn't suffering from brain damage, they were just naturally like that...)[[/note]]

* Norwich -- With a population of about 200,000, Norwich is the largest settlement in both Norfolk and East Anglia by some margin, and is the only city in Norfolk and Suffolk combined. Rather marooned in the middle of East Anglia today, it is hard to believe that until the 18th century it was England's second-largest city after London, having benefitted from the wool trade throughout the Middle Ages. As Norfolk's county town it shares many of the wider region's stereotypes, though it's obviously not quite so rustic -- it also bucks a ''lot'' of these stereotypes, not being the backwater it's often shown as but in reality being a bustling 'rural capital' and a vibrant cultural hub with a large young population due to the presence of the [[UsefulNotes/BritishUnis University of East Anglia]], and quite a few large employers such as Aviva, Marsh, the BBC, ITV and Naked Wines. The roadsigns when you enter the urban area say "Welcome to Norwich: A Fine City", which nicely suggests a slightly old-fashioned air but one of quiet confidence and vaguely genteel aspiration. Still England's most complete medieval city, it was once so crammed with ancient sites of worship and beer-houses it was famously said to have "a pub for every day of the year and a church for every week" -- a line that in fact undersells the number of pubs historically, which peaked at over ''780'' in the late 19th century. Its magnificent cathedral has the second-tallest spire in Britain at 96m (315ft). Norwich is perhaps still most famous, however, for being the fictional home of Franchise/AlanPartridge.

* Thetford -- A small market town near Thetford Forest, one of England's largest forests. It is the main settlement in Breckland, a region whose unusual habitat of gorse-covered sandy heathland is home to many rare flora and fauna and which is one of the driest areas in England. Thetford is the birthplace of Creator/ThomasPaine, and also the spiritual home of the eternally popular ''Series/DadsArmy'', the location filming for which was done in and around the town -- a life-size sculpture of [[Characters/DadsArmy Captain Mainwaring]] can be found sitting on a bench in the town today.

* Ipswich -- The largest settlement, historic county town and the traditional rival of Norwich (which is slightly larger and has city status) -- not least in [[UsefulNotes/TheBeautifulGame footballing]] terms. Both the England national football team's most successful managers Sir Alf Ramsey and Sir Bobby Robson formerly managed Ipswich Town[[note]](see UsefulNotes/EnglishPremierLeague for more details on the club and on Norwich City FC)[[/note]], winning respectively the Football League (Ramsey) and the FA Cup and UEFA Cup (Robson) during their remarkable spells in charge of an otherwise modest provincial club. Various surveys suggest Ipswich is one of England's cleanest, happiest and most desirable places to live.
* Lowestoft -- Britain's most easterly settlement, and Suffolk's second-largest town, an old seaside resort situated on the coast slightly south of Great Yarmouth and some 110 miles NE of London. Like Yarmouth it possesses wide sandy beaches and is a tourism hotspot, but similarly it is also one of the county's most deprived areas. Bombarded in both World Wars by respectively the German Navy and the Luftwaffe, it is sometimes claimed as one of the UK's most heavily-bombed towns per head of population. Lowestoft Ness (Ness Point) on its seafront is the easternmost point of England, [[UsefulNotes/BritainVersusTheUK Great Britain, the United Kingdom and the British Isles]].

* Felixstowe -- A small coastal town that also happens to boast Britain's largest container port, one of the busiest in Europe, which deals with nearly half of the country's containerised shipping trade. Three years before the first terminal opened in 1967, however, the sea off Felixstowe was notable in a different way as at Easter 1964 BuccaneerBroadcaster Radio Caroline became the first 'pirate radio' ship in the North Sea to go on air in an attempt to break Creator/TheBBC's monopoly.

* Peterborough -- In Cambridgeshire but previously Northamptonshire, where East Anglia shades into UsefulNotes/TheMidlands. Supposedly the gateway to East Anglia (depending which direction you're coming from, obviously). The city has been important since the Middle Ages (having gained city status in 1541) and has a fine cathedral whose low towers make it seem to 'crouch' against the Fenland winds in its flat landscape. The population expanded greatly in the 1960s after being designated a New Town; it remains one of the country's fastest growing cities.

* '''Fenland''' or '''The Fens''' is a an area which crosses the Norfolk and Cambridgeshire boundary. It was previously marshland but was drained with a great network of dykes and pumps, starting in antiquity but in earnest in the mid-1600s and then again (after the newly exposed land dried, shrank down further and... re-flooded) in the late 1700s and early 1800s and is now some of the most fertile farmland in the country. Exceptionally flat, it includes the lowest land in the United Kingdom -- Holme Fen in Cambridgeshire holds the record at around 9 feet below sea level. Most of the area's towns are built on high land which formed 'islands' in the marsh, the most notable of these being Wisbech and the cathedral city (one of the UK's smallest cities, pop. c.20,000) of Ely. The area is also home to a large Eastern European population who immigrated there to work on the land after a number of Eastern European countries joined UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion. As a result the area is more pro-[[UsefulNotes/BritishPoliticalSystem UKIP]] (the populist right-wing party) than the majority of the UK, and the Fenland town of Ramsey became the first town council to be run by UKIP. The district council of Fenland was one of the top ten councils in the entire United Kingdom to vote to [[UsefulNotes/PostWarBritishPolitics leave the EU in the 2016 referendum]].
* '''The Broads''' is a national park which crosses the boundary of Norfolk and Suffolk, though commonly known as 'the Norfolk Broads'. The area, a network of navigable lakes and rivers that have become both a haven for wildlife and a popular tourist destination for boating holidays, was long thought to be a natural feature of the landscape but in the 1960s it was proved that in origin it is artificial -- from where the local monasteries during the Middle Ages excavated for peat which was used as fuel. Sea levels rose and the diggings flooded, forming what is now known as the Broads.

* ''Series/{{Detectorists}}'' takes place in the fictional town of Danebury, northern Essex, which some consider to be part of East Anglia. Even more so because it's actually filmed in Suffolk.
* ''Series/Kingdom2007'' 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 SceneryPorn. It's also one of the few series to at least ''try'' to get the Norfolk accent right, although not everyone can quite manage it.
** Given this, it's hardly surprising that star Creator/StephenFry is from Norfolk -- raised in a village outside Reepham[[note]](pronounced "Reefum", just so you know)[[/note]].

* The [[TransatlanticEquivalent UK version]] of ''Series/SaleOfTheCentury'', produced by the local Creator/{{ITV}} company [[NameDrop Anglia Television]], used to open each show with the expansive but underwhelming pronouncement "Live from Norwich, it's the ''Quiz Of The Week''!"[[note]](Anglia TV themselves were recognized for their famous [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u02ZP0TiNU logo]], a sterling silver statue of a knight on horseback, rotating and carrying a lance with the "Anglia" name emblazoned on the pennant; it was retired in 1988 in favor of a new "flag" [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_uX_z1zbSs logo]], where east-facing triangles are arranged to form an abstract "A", with the animation showing the flag forming from different segments; it was eliminated in 1999 for the various ITV generic looks.)[[/note]] The intro was spoofed in the radio comedy show ''Radio/TheBurkissWay'' for its provincialism:
-->''And now from Anglia TV! Live, from our studios at an incompletely converted abbatoir in Norwich!''\\

* In ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials'', the Fens were never drained and the Gyptians (alternate universe Romani, who travel in barges instead of caravans) took over the land to be their capital city.
* Dr Malcolm Bradbury's novel ''The History Man'' is a thinly autobiographical account where a character stalks the campus of what in the 1970s would have been a "new" university. It's a VERY thinly disguised depiction of Norwich's [[UsefulNotes/BritishUnis University of East Anglia]] and some of its teaching staff -- characters who could easily be identified by anyone who was around UEA in the time period 1970-86. In fact, the BBC got to film part of their TV adaptation at UEA.

* The East Anglia arc of ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedValhalla'' has Eivor head there to court Thegn Oswald into making an alliance with their town of Ravensthorpe while also having to deal with a mutual enemy in Jarl Rued, a viking warlord who's been pillaging towns left and right, but also went and sent his men to the wrong town, earning a very pissed off Eivor to deal with the problem personally.

Whether Essex belongs in East Anglia - as it undeniably does, geographically - or should be considered one of the [[UsefulNotes/HomeCounties]], or as a post-War expansion of Greater London, is an ongoing debate. More details about Essex will be found on the UsefulNotes/HomeCounties page.

* ''Series/{{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 SceneryPorn. It's also one of the few series to at least ''try'' to get the Norfolk accent right, although not everyone can quite manage it.

It is even today a mostly rural part of the country and relatively sparsely-populated: Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire rank respectively 5th, 8th and 15th among England's 48 ceremonial counties by size, but only 25th, 32nd and 28th in population. The exceptions are the cities of Norwich, Cambridge and Peterborough, plus several towns such as Ipswich, King's Lynn, Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft and Bury St Edmunds. The local UsefulNotes/BritishAccents form part of what might be called (cruelly) a "Yokel Belt" stretching across southern England from Cornwall to Norfolk, featuring a generally common sort of drawl -- meaning the uninitiated (or even experienced actors) attempting to do an East Anglian accent will tend to fall into West Country dialect, despite the fact that they really don't sound similar.

The region derives its name from its status in the [[DarkAgeEurope Dark Ages]], when it was the eastern major kingdom[[note]](the other major ones being [[UsefulNotes/TheMidlands Mercia]] and [[OopNorth Northumbria]])[[/note]] of the [[UsefulNotes/AngloSaxons Angles]], one of the Germanic tribes that invaded Britain after [[UsefulNotes/TheMigrationPeriod the Romans withdrew in the fifth century]] -- and who also ultimately gave their name to England (''Angle-land'') as a whole. Archaeological evidence suggests that East Anglia experienced the earliest settlement by these people, meaning that the area actually has a fairly strong claim to being the first place in the world where [Old] 'English' was spoken. Oh, and back when it was a kingdom, the East Angles living there were divided into the "north folk" and "south folk." Guess what those names became?

** ''The first 'o' in Norfolk is long, as in the word 'nor'; the 'o' in Norwich however is short, as in 'not'.''
** ''Cambridge is pronounced "[=CAMEbridge=]", but it sits on the River Cam which is said just as it looks.''

** ''Peterborough, in common with other British places with similar endings, has '-borough' said as "-burruh".''

There is a certain feel to Norfolk of a place 'out of time'. There are no 'M'-class motorways in the county, and though it is within easy striking distance of London it is off the beaten track -- its liminal location in the great flat bulge of East Anglia, surrounded on two sides by the North Sea and additionally separated from UsefulNotes/TheMidlands at its northwestern corner by a roughly square-shaped bay of about 15 miles (25km) per side known as The Wash, means you can't go through it on the way to anywhere else. It does carry a palpable sense of history: there are for instance over 650 medieval churches still standing in the county, by far the highest tally in England and the greatest such concentration in the world.

The flip side of this is that, although home to two large shopping centres, several live music venues and one of the largest universities in England, Norfolk's county town Norwich and the county in general are often (rather unfairly) stereotyped as being at best remote, agricultural, unsophisticated and out of step with national trends, even by East Anglian standards. At worst, the portrait is of somewhere incestuous and almost medieval[[note]](it has to be said, not entirely inaccurately: [[UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain the Industrial Revolution]] pretty much left the entire county behind; on the positive side, the likes of Norwich were left relatively unscathed by the financial crash in 2008 because of its more secluded/less interdependent nature and the presence of large local firms like Aviva in the city)[[/note]] -- the closest American CulturalTranslation might be the more exaggerated depictions of the DeepSouth.[[note]](Which is ironic, since East Anglia was the main source of the Puritan migration to New England... whose descendants in turn settled much of the northern tier of the US, and extended into Northern California. In other words, the culture that East Anglian migrants established in America is the polar opposite of the Deep South!)[[/note]] This 'otherness' is humorously acknowledged by the inhabitants, who have an old and self-deprecating saying that someone or something is ''"normal for Norfolk"''.[[note]](Allegedly, hospital doctors would add "NFN" to local patients' notes as a discreet way of saying that the patient wasn't suffering from brain damage, they were just naturally like that...)[[/note]]

* Ipswich -- The largest settlement, historic county town and the traditional rival of Norwich (which is slightly larger and has city status) -- not least in [[UsefulNotes/TheBeautifulGame footballing]] terms, where Ipswich Town FC and Norwich City FC engage in what is surely the longest-distance 'local' rivalry in England. Both the England national football team's mosst successful managers Sir Alf Ramsey and Sir Bobby Robson formerly managed Ipswich Town, winning respectively the Football League (Ramsey) and the FA Cup and UEFA Cup (Robson) during their remarkable spells in charge of an otherwise modest provincial club. Various surveys suggest Ipswich is one of England's cleanest, happiest and most desirable places to live.
* Lowestoft -- Britain's most easterly settlement, and Suffolk's second-largest town, an old seaside resort situated on the coast slightly south of Great Yarmouth and some 110 miles NE of London. Hometown of retro glam-rockers Music/TheDarkness. Like Yarmouth it possesses wide sandy beaches and is a tourism hotspot, but similarly it is also one of the county's most deprived areas. Bombarded in both World Wars by respectively the German Navy and the Luftwaffe, it is sometimes claimed as one of the UK's most heavily-bombed towns per head of population. Lowestoft Ness (Ness Point) on its seafront is the most easterly point of England, [[UsefulNotes/BritainVersusTheUK Great Britain, the United Kingdom and the British Isles]].
* Bury St Edmunds -- A medium-sized historic market town named after [[Myth/StEdmundOfEastAnglia St Edmund]], a.k.a. the East Anglian 9th-century king Edmund the Martyr, who was slain fighting the [[UsefulNotes/{{Denmark}} Danes]] after he refused to renounce Christ. Colloquially known locally as just Bury, the name comes from the same Germanic root as ''burg'' (fortress) and ''borough'' -- but fittingly St Edmund's relics were actually buried in the abbey whose ruins still lie in the heart of the town.

* '''Fenland''' or '''The Fens''' is a an area which crosses the Norfolk and Cambridgeshire boundary. It was previously marshland but was drained with a great network of dykes and pumps, starting in antiquity but in earnest in the mid-1600s and then again (after the newly exposed land dried, shrank down further and... re-flooded) in the late 1700s and early 1800s and is now some of the most fertile farmland in the country. Exceptionally flat, it includes the lowest land in the United Kingdom -- Holme Fen in Cambridgeshire holds the record at around 9 feet below sea level. Most of the area's towns are built on high land which formed 'islands' in the marsh, the most notable of these being Wisbech and the cathedral city (one of the UK's smallest cities, pop. c.20,000) of Ely. The area is also home to a large Eastern European population who immigrated there to work on the land after a number of Eastern European countries joined UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion. As a result the area is more pro-[[UsefulNotes/BritishPoliticalSystem UKIP]] (the populist right-wing party) than most of the UK, and the Fenland town of Ramsey became the first town council to be run by UKIP. The district council of Fenland was one of the top ten councils in the entire United Kingdom to vote to [[UsefulNotes/PostWarBritishPolitics leave the EU in the 2016 referendum]].

** Given this, it's hardly surprising that star Creator/StephenFry is from Norfolk -- raised in a village outside Reepham[[note]](pron. ''Reefum'', just so you know)[[/note]].

* Surprisingly little rock or pop music of note comes out of East Anglia. The Singing Postman[[note]]of Ipswich [[/note]] and some members of Music/PinkFloyd including Music/SydBarrett[[note]]variously born and raised in Cambridge, where Barrett also spent his long reclusive post-retirement years[[/note]] in the 1960s, Music/BrianEno [[note]]of Woodbridge, Suffolk [[/note]] and Music/OliviaNewtonJohn[[note]]who although raised in Australia, was born in Cambridge[[/note]] in the 1970s, Music/NikKershaw[[note]]from Bristol but brought up in Ipswich[[/note]] and [[Music/{{Erasure}} Andy Bell]] in the 1980s, Cathy Dennis[[note]]of Norwich[[/note]] in the 1990s, spoof folkies The Kipper Family, Music/BethOrton [[note]]born and raised in Dereham, Norfolk before moving to London in her teens[[/note]], Music/TheDarkness [[note]]of Lowestoft, Suffolk[[/note]], SpaceRock band Music/UndergroundZero[[note]]of Norwich and various North Norfolk villages[[/note]], Music/EdSheeran[[note]]who although born in West Yorkshire, was raised in Suffolk[[/note]].... and that's pretty much it. Oh, and, hilariously enough, Suffolk is the home of Music/CradleOfFilth, with Dani Filth himself being based in Ipswich. This is a fact that [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/8239258/Suffolk-tourist-board-embarrassed-after-metal-band-Cradle-of-Filth-voted-countys-greatest-icon.html seems to embarrass]] the local tourism boards, which want absolutely nothing to do with them.
* The [[TransatlanticEquivalent UK version]] of ''Series/SaleOfTheCentury'', produced by the local Creator/{{ITV}} company [[NameDrop Anglia Television]], used to open each show with the ambitious but underwhelming pronouncement "Live from Norwich, it's the ''Quiz Of The Week''!" (Anglia themselves were recognized for their famous [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u02ZP0TiNU logo]], a sterling silver statue of a knight on horseback, rotating and carrying a lance with the "Anglia" name emblazoned on the pennant; it was retired in 1988 in favor of a new "flag" [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_uX_z1zbSs logo]], where east-facing triangles are arranged to form an abstract "A", with the animation showing the flag forming from different segments; it was eliminated in 1999 for the various ITV generic looks.) The intro was spoofed in the radio comedy show ''Radio/TheBurkissWay'' for its provincialism:

* In ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials'', the Fens were not drained and the Gyptians (alternate universe Romani, who travel in barges instead of caravans) took over the land to be their capital city.
* Dr Malcolm Bradbury's novel ''The History Man'', is a thinly autobiographical account where a character stalks the campus of what in the 1970's would have been a "new" university. It's a VERY thinly disguised depiction of the [[UsefulNotes/BritishUnis University of East Anglia, Norwich]], and some of its teaching staff -- characters who can so easily be identified by anyone who was around UEA in the time period 1970-86. In fact, the BBC got to film part of their TV adaptation at UEA.

* Surprisingly little rock or pop music of note comes out of East Anglia. The Singing Postman[[note]]of Ipswich [[/note]] and some members of Music/PinkFloyd including Music/SydBarrett[[note]]variously born and raised in Cambridge, where Barrett also spent his long reclusive post-retirement years[[/note]] in the 1960s, Brian Eno [[note]]of Woodbridge, Suffolk [[/note]] and Olivia Newton-John[[note]]who although raised in Australia, was born in Cambridge[[/note]] in the 1970s, Nick Kershaw[[note]]from Bristol but brought up in Ipswich[[/note]] in the 1980s, Cathy Dennis[[note]]of Norwich[[/note]] in the 1990s, spoof folkies The Kipper Family, Music/BethOrton [[note]]born and raised in Dereham, Norfolk before moving to London in her teens[[/note]], Music/TheDarkness [[note]]of Lowestoft, Suffolk[[/note]], SpaceRock band Music/UndergroundZero[[note]]of Norwich and various North Norfolk villages[[/note]], Music/EdSheeran[[note]]who although born in West Yorkshire, was raised in Suffolk[[/note]].... and that's pretty much it. Oh, and, hilariously enough, Suffolk is the home of Music/CradleOfFilth, with Dani Filth himself being based in Ipswich. This is a fact that [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/8239258/Suffolk-tourist-board-embarrassed-after-metal-band-Cradle-of-Filth-voted-countys-greatest-icon.html seems to embarrass]] the local tourism boards, which want absolutely nothing to do with them.

The most easterly part of England, occupying a large cape sticking out to the northeast of UsefulNotes/{{London}} surrounded by the North Sea. The region is made up of (indisputably) the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, 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 of the '''Angles''' that ruled over parts of England, which was later united with Es'''sex''', the eastern kingdom of the '''Saxons''' (the other major Saxon kingdoms being [[UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry Wessex]], [[UsefulNotes/HomeCounties Sussex, and Kent]]), as tribal distinctions blurred and turned to a common [[UsefulNotes/AngloSaxons Anglo-Saxon]] and eventually English identity. However, true to the lovely English tendency of messing around with history, a newspaper called the ''East Anglian Daily Times'' also serves the area around Colchester near Essex's border with Suffolk.)[[/note]] Sometimes (especially on the internet) the region is confused with the east of England as a whole.

It is a mostly rural part of UsefulNotes/{{Britain}}, and the local UsefulNotes/BritishAccents form part of what might (harshly) be called a "Yokel Belt", featuring a generally common sort of drawl, stretching across southern England from Cornwall to Norfolk -- meaning the uninitiated (or even experienced actors) attempting to do an East Anglian accent will tend to fall into West Country dialect, despite the fact that they really don't sound similar. The rural character of the counties does mean they are mostly relatively sparsely-populated: Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire rank respectively 5th, 8th and 15th among England's 48 ceremonial counties by size, but only 25th, 32nd and 28th in population. The exceptions are the cities of Norwich, Cambridge and Peterborough, plus several towns such as Ipswich, King's Lynn, Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft and Bury St Edmunds.

East Anglia covers a large area but does not occupy a large niche in British popular imagination or culture -- summed up by, if nothing else, Creator/NoelCoward's memorable epithet ''"Very flat, Norfolk"''. The region is indeed known for its big skies and wide horizons unimpeded by much in the way of either dramatic terrain or urban development; the western and northern parts of Norfolk in particular are very low-lying and the county's highest point is just 103m (338ft) above sea level. East Anglia is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the [[UsefulNotes/{{Tornadoes}} tornado]] capital of the British Isles.

The region derives its name from its status in the [[DarkAgeEurope Dark Ages]], when it was the eastern major kingdom[[note]](the other major ones being [[UsefulNotes/TheMidlands Mercia]] and [[OopNorth Northumbria]])[[/note]] of the tribe of the [[UsefulNotes/AngloSaxons Angles]], one of the Germanic tribes that invaded Britain after [[UsefulNotes/TheMigrationPeriod the Romans withdrew in the fifth century]] -- they also ultimately gave their name to England (''Angle-land'') as a whole. Archaeological evidence suggests that East Anglia experienced the earliest settlement by these people, meaning that the area actually has a fairly strong claim to being the first place in the world where [Old] English was spoken. Oh, and back when it was a kingdom, the East Angles living there were divided into the "north folk" and "south folk." Guess what those names became?

[-'''''Notes on pronunciation:'''''-]\\
[-''Norfolk and Suffolk are pronounced respectively "NOR-f'k" and "SUH-f'k", i.e. to rhyme broadly with 'book' not with 'yolk'.''-]\\
[-''Ipswich is pronounced as it looks ("IP-switch") but the 'w' in Norwich is dropped: "[=NORRitch=]" or, locally, "[=NAHHRidge=]".''-]\\
[-''The first 'o' in Norfolk is long, as in the word 'nor'; the 'o' in Norwich though is short, as in 'porridge'.''-]\\
[-''Cambridge is pronounced "CAME-bridge", but it sits on the River Cam which is said just as it looks.''-]\\
[-''Cambridgeshire, in common with other British counties ending in -shire, has its last syllable pronounced "-shuh" or "-sheer", never actually "shire".''-]\\
[-''Peterborough, in common with other British places with similar endings, has '-borough' said as "-burruh".-]''


!!Norfolk
There is a certain feel to Norfolk of a place 'out of time', as despite being within easy striking distance of London it is off the beaten track: there are no M-class motorways in the county, and its liminal location in the great bulge of East Anglia, bordered on two sides by the sea, means you can't go through it on the way to anywhere else. It does carry a palpable sense of history: there are for instance over 650 medieval churches still standing in the county, by far the highest tally in England and the greatest such concentration in the world. The flip side of this is that, although home to two large shopping centres, several live music venues and one of the largest universities in England, Norfolk's county town Norwich and the county in general are often (rather unfairly) stereotyped as being at best remote, agricultural, unsophisticated and out of step with national trends, even by East Anglian standards. At worst, the portrait is of somewhere incestuous and almost medieval[[note]](it has to be said, not entirely inaccurately: King's Lynn in particular was historically one of the biggest and most important towns in the country, thanks largely to the port, but [[UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain the Industrial Revolution]] pretty much left the entire county behind; on the flip side of this, the likes of Norwich were left relatively unscathed by the financial crash in 2008 because of its more secluded/less interdependent nature and the presence of large firms like Aviva in the city)[[/note]] -- the closest American CulturalTranslation might be the more exaggerated depictions of the DeepSouth.[[note]](Which is ironic, since East Anglia was the main source of the Puritan migration to New England... whose descendants in turn settled much of the northern tier of the US, and extended into Northern California. In other words, the culture that East Anglian migrants established in America is the polar opposite of the Deep South!)[[/note]] This 'otherness' is humorously acknowledged by the inhabitants, who have an old and self-deprecating saying that someone or something is ''"normal for Norfolk"''.[[note]](Allegedly, hospital doctors would add "NFN" to local patients' notes as a discreet way of saying that the patient wasn't suffering from brain damage, they were just naturally like that...)[[/note]]\\

!!!'''Norwich'''
With a population of about 200,000, Norwich is the largest settlement in both Norfolk and East Anglia by some margin, and is the only city in Norfolk and Suffolk combined. Rather marooned in the middle of rural East Anglia today, it is hard to believe that until the 18th century it was England's second-largest city after London, having benefitted from the wool trade throughout the Middle Ages. As Norfolk's county town it shares many of the wider region's stereotypes, though it's obviously not quite so rustic -- it also bucks a ''lot'' of these stereotypes, not being the backwater it's often shown as but in reality being a vibrant cultural hub with a large young population due to the presence of the [[UsefulNotes/BritishUnis University of East Anglia]], a bustling city centre and quite a few large employers such as Aviva, Marsh, the BBC, ITV and Naked Wines. The roadsigns when you enter the urban area say "Welcome to Norwich: A Fine City", which nicely suggests a slightly prelapsarian air but one of quiet confidence and vaguely genteel aspiration. Still England's most complete medieval city, it was once so crammed with ancient sites of worship and beer-houses it is famously said to have had "a pub for every day of the year and a church for every week" -- which in fact undersold the number of pubs in the city, which peaked around the year 1870 at over 780. Its magnificent cathedral has the second-tallest spire in Britain at 96m (315ft). Norwich is perhaps still most famous, however, for being the fictional home of Franchise/AlanPartridge.

!!!'''King's Lynn'''[[note]](not to be confused with [[Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire King's Landing]])[[/note]]
A medium-sized port and market town in the west of the county, slightly outside the Fens. Once known as Bishop's Lynn while under the temporal and spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishop of Norwich, but in the reign of [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfTudor Henry VIII]] it was surrendered to the crown and took its current name -- though it is commonly known as just Lynn. Situated just south of The Wash, a roughly square-shaped bay of the North Sea fed by four rivers, in the Middle Ages when trade with Europe was dominated by the UsefulNotes/HanseaticLeague of ports it was considered as vital to England as Liverpool was during the Industrial Revolution.
!!!'''Great Yarmouth'''
Norfolk's most significant seaside resort town, situated on the east coast slightly north of its 'twin' Lowestoft the other side of the Suffolk county boundary. Commonly referred to as just Yarmouth (the "Great" is to distinguish it from another Yarmouth on the UsefulNotes/IsleOfWight), it is known for its 'Golden Mile' of seafront and sandy beaches, amusement arcades and two piers. Alas now somewhat run-down in common with many other such British seaside destinations whose heyday was the mid-20th century. Much of the historic town survives despite it suffering serious damage from the Luftwaffe during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII as the last significant place Germans could drop bombs before returning home.
!!!'''Thetford'''
A small market town near Thetford Forest, one of England's largest forests. It is the main settlement in Breckland, a region whose unusual habitat of gorse-covered sandy heathland is home to many rare flora and fauna and which is one of the driest areas in England. Thetford is the birthplace of Creator/ThomasPaine, and also the spiritual home of the eternally popular ''Series/DadsArmy'', the location filming for which was done in and around the town -- a life-size sculpture of Captain Mainwaring can be found sitting on a bench in the town today.

!!Suffolk

!!!'''Ipswich'''
The largest settlement, historic county town and the traditional rival of Norwich (which is slightly larger and has city status) -- not least in [[UsefulNotes/TheBeautifulGame footballing]] terms, where Ipswich Town FC and Norwich City FC engage in what is surely the longest-distance 'local' rivalry in England. Both the England national football team's mosst successful managers Sir Alf Ramsey and Sir Bobby Robson formerly managed Ipswich Town, winning respectively the Football League (Ramsey) and the FA Cup and UEFA Cup (Robson) during their remarkable spells in charge of an otherwise modest provincial club. Various surveys suggest Ipswich is one of England's cleanest, happiest and most desirable places to live.
!!!'''Lowestoft'''
Britain's most easterly settlement, and Suffolk's second-largest town, an old seaside resort situated on the coast slightly south of Great Yarmouth and some 110 miles NE of London. Hometown of retro glam-rockers Music/TheDarkness. Like Yarmouth it possesses wide sandy beaches and is a tourism hotspot, but similarly it is also one of the county's most deprived areas. Bombarded in both World Wars by respectively the German Navy and the Luftwaffe, it is sometimes claimed as one of the UK's most heavily-bombed towns per head of population. Lowestoft Ness (Ness Point) on its seafront is the most easterly point of England, [[UsefulNotes/BritainVersusTheUK Great Britain, the United Kingdom and the British Isles]].
!!!'''Bury St Edmunds'''
A medium-sized historic market town named after [[Myth/StEdmundOfEastAnglia St Edmund]], a.k.a. the East Anglian 9th-century king Edmund the Martyr, who was slain fighting the [[UsefulNotes/{{Denmark}} Danes]] after he refused to renounce Christ. Colloquially known locally as just Bury, the name comes from the same Germanic root as ''burg'' (fortress) and ''borough'' -- but fittingly St Edmund's relics were actually buried in the abbey whose ruins still lie in the heart of the town.
!!!'''Felixstowe'''
A small coastal town that also happens to boast Britain's largest container port, one of the busiest in Europe, which deals with nearly half of the country's containerised shipping trade. Three years before the first terminal opened in 1967, however, the sea off Felixstowe was notable in a different way as at Easter 1964 BuccaneerBroadcaster Radio Caroline became the first 'pirate radio' ship in the North Sea to go on air in an attempt to break Creator/TheBBC's monopoly.


!!Cambridgeshire
!!!'''Huntingdonshire'''
One of England's smallest counties and now a district in Cambridgeshire. The county town of Huntingdon is where UsefulNotes/OliverCromwell was from. Former [[UsefulNotes/TheMenOfDowningStreet Prime Minister]] of the UK UsefulNotes/JohnMajor was Member of Parliament for here from 1979-2001.

!!!'''Peterborough'''
In Cambridgeshire but previously Northamptonshire, where East Anglia shades into UsefulNotes/TheMidlands. Supposedly the gateway to East Anglia (depending which direction you're coming from, obviously). The city has been important since the Middle Ages (having gained city status in 1541) and has a fine cathedral whose low towers make it seem to 'crouch' against the Fenland winds in its flat landscape. The population expanded greatly in the 1960s after being designated a New Town; it remains one of the country's fastest growing cities.

!!!'''Cambridge'''
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 'UsefulNotes/{{Oxbridge}}' whole by outsiders.


!!Special areas
* '''Fenland''' or '''The Fens''' is a an area which crosses the Norfolk and Cambridgeshire boundary. It was previously marshland but was drained in the late 1700s and early 1800s and is now some of the most fertile farmland in the country, along with being exceptionally flat. Most of the area's towns are built on high land which formed islands in the marsh, the most notable of these being Wisbech and the small cathedral 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 UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion. As a result the area is more pro-UKIP than most of the UK, and the Fenland town of Ramsey became the first town council to be run by UKIP. The district council of Fenland was one of the top ten councils in the ''entire United Kingdom'' to vote to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum.

* '''The Broads''' is a national park which crosses the boundary of Norfolk and Suffolk. The area was ancestrally mined for peat which was used as fuel. Sea levels rose and during the Middle Ages the diggings flooded, forming what is now known as the Broads, a network of navigable lakes and rivers that have become both a haven for wildlife and a popular tourist destination for boating holidays.

** Given this, it's hardly surprising that star Creator/StephenFry is from Norfolk -- raised in a village outside Reepham[[note]](pron. ''Reefum'', just so you know).[[/note]]).

* Surprisingly little rock or pop music of note comes out of East Anglia. The Singing Postman[[note]]of Ipswich [[/note]] and some members of Music/PinkFloyd including Music/SydBarrett[[note]]variously born and raised in Cambridge, where Barrett also spent his long reclusive post-retirement years[[/note]] in the 1960's, Brian Eno [[note]]of Woodbridge, Suffolk [[/note]] and Olivia Newton-John[[note]]who although raised in Australia, was born in Cambridge[[/note]] in the 1970's, Nick Kershaw[[note]]from Bristol but brought up in Ipswich[[/note]] in the 1980's, Cathy Dennis[[note]]of Norwich[[/note]] in the 1990's, spoof folkies The Kipper Family, Music/BethOrton [[note]]born and raised in Dereham, Norfolk before moving to London in her teens[[/note]] Music/TheDarkness [[note]]of Lowestoft, Suffolk[[/note]], SpaceRock band Music/UndergroundZero[[note]]of Norwich and various North Norfolk villages[[/note]], Music/EdSheeran[[note]]who although born in West Yorkshire, was raised in Suffolk[[/note]].... and that's pretty much it. Oh, and, hilariously enough, Suffolk is the home of Music/CradleOfFilth, with Dani Filth himself being based in Ipswich. This is a fact that [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/8239258/Suffolk-tourist-board-embarrassed-after-metal-band-Cradle-of-Filth-voted-countys-greatest-icon.html seems to embarrass]] the local tourism boards, which want absolutely nothing to do with them.

* Dr Malcolm Bradbury's novel ''The History Man'', is a thinly autobiographical account where a character stalks the campus of what in the 1970's would have been a "new" university. It's a VERY thinly disguised depiction of the [[UsefulNotes/BritishUnis University of East Anglia, Norwich]], and some of its teaching staff -- characters who can so easily be identified by anyone who was around UEA in the time period 1970-86. In fact, the BBC got to film part of their TV adaptation at UEA....

It is a mostly rural part of UsefulNotes/{{Britain}}, and the local UsefulNotes/BritishAccents form part of what might (harshly) be called a "Yokel Belt", featuring a generally common sort of drawl, stretching across southern England from Cornwall to Norfolk -- meaning the uninitiated (or even experienced actors) attempting to do an East Anglian accent will tend to fall into West Country dialect, despite the fact that they really don't sound similar. The rural character of the counties does mean they are mostly relatively sparsely-populated -- Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire rank respectively 5th, 8th and 15th among England's 48 ceremonial counties in size, but only 25th, 32nd and 28th in population. The exceptions are the cities of Norwich, Cambridge and Peterborough, plus several towns such as Ipswich, King's Lynn, Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft and Bury St Edmunds.

''Notes on pronunciation:''\\
''Norfolk and Suffolk are pronounced respectively "NOR-f'k" and "SUH-f'k", i.e. to rhyme broadly with 'book' not with 'yolk'.''\\
''Ipswich is pronounced as it looks ("IP-switch") but the 'w' in Norwich is dropped: "[=NORRitch=]" or, locally, "[=NAHHRidge=]".''\\
''The first 'o' in Norfolk is long, as in the word 'nor'; the 'o' in Norwich though is short, as in 'porridge'.''\\
''Cambridge is pronounced "CAME-bridge", but it sits on the River Cam which is said just as it looks.''\\
''Cambridgeshire, in common with other British counties ending in -shire, has its last syllable pronounced "-shuh" or "-sheer", never actually "shire".''\\
''Peterborough, in common with other British places with similar endings, has '-borough' said as "-burruh".''

There is a certain feel to Norfolk of a place 'out of time', as despite being within easy striking distance of London it is off the beaten track: there are no M-class motorways in the county, and its liminal location in the great bulge of East Anglia, bordered on two sides by the sea, means you can't go through it on the way to anywhere else. It does carry a palpable sense of history: there are for instance over 650 medieval churches still standing in the county, by far the highest tally in England and the greatest such concentration in the world. The flip side of this is that, although home to two large shopping centres, several live music venues and one of the largest universities in England, Norfolk's county town Norwich and the county in general are often (rather unfairly) stereotyped as being at best remote, flat, agricultural, unsophisticated and out of step with national trends, even by East Anglian standards. At worst, the portrait is of somewhere incestuous and almost medieval[[note]](it has to be said, not entirely inaccurately: King's Lynn in particular was historically one of the biggest and most important towns in the country, thanks largely to the port, but [[UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain the Industrial Revolution]] pretty much left the entire county behind; on the flip side of this, the likes of Norwich were left relatively unscathed by the financial crash in 2008 because of its more secluded/less interdependent nature and the presence of large firms like Aviva in the city)[[/note]] -- the closest American CulturalTranslation might be the more exaggerated depictions of the DeepSouth.[[note]](Which is ironic, since East Anglia was the main source of the Puritan migration to New England... whose descendants in turn settled much of the northern tier of the US, and extended into Northern California. In other words, the culture that East Anglian migrants established in America is the polar opposite of the Deep South!)[[/note]] This 'otherness' is humorously acknowledged by the inhabitants, who have an old and self-deprecating saying that someone or something is ''"normal for Norfolk"''.[[note]]Allegedly, hospital doctors would add "NFN" to local patients' notes as a discreet way of saying that the patient wasn't suffering from brain damage, they were just naturally like that...[[/note]]\\

!!!'''King's Lynn'''
(Not to be confused with [[Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire King's Landing]].) A medium-sized port and market town in the west of the county, slightly outside the Fens. Once known as Bishop's Lynn while under the temporal and spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishop of Norwich, but in the reign of [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfTudor Henry VIII]] it was surrendered to the crown and took its current name -- though it is commonly known as just Lynn. Situated just south of The Wash, a roughly square-shaped bay of the North Sea fed by four rivers, in the Middle Ages when trade with Europe was dominated by the UsefulNotes/HanseaticLeague of ports it was considered as vital to England as Liverpool was during the Industrial Revolution.

A small market town near Thetford Forest, one of England's largest forests, noted as the birthplace of Creator/ThomasPaine. It is the main settlement in Breckland, a region whose unusual habitat of gorse-covered sandy heathland is home to many rare flora and fauna and which is one of the driest areas in England. Thetford is also the spiritual home of the eternally popular ''Series/DadsArmy'', the location filming for which was done in and around the town -- a life-size sculpture of Captain Mainwaring can be found sitting on a bench in the town today.

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 [[UsefulNotes/AngloSaxons Angles]] (the other major Angle kingdoms being [[UsefulNotes/TheMidlands Mercia]] and [[OopNorth Northumbria]]). This kingdom was later united with Essex, the eastern kingdom of the Saxons (the other major Saxon kingdoms being [[UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry Wessex]], [[UsefulNotes/HomeCounties 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.[[/note]] 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 Peterborough, as well as several towns such as Ipswich.

East Anglia derives its name from the Kingdom of the East Angles, the Angles being one of the Germanic tribes that invaded Britain after the Romans withdrew in the fifth century (they also gave their name to England as a whole). Archaeological evidence suggests that East Anglia experienced the earliest settlement by these people, meaning that the area actually has a fairly strong claim to being the first place in the world where (Old) English was spoken. Oh, and back when it was a kingdom, the Angles living there were divided into the "north folk" and "south folk." Guess what those names became?

Also the [[UsefulNotes/{{Tornadoes}} tornado]] capital of the British Isles.

* '''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 [[note]]it has to be said, not entirely inaccurately - King's Lynn in particular was historically one of the biggest and most important towns in the country, thanks largely to the port, but TheIndustrialRevolution pretty much left the entire county behind; on the flip side of this, the likes of Norwich were left relatively unscathed by the financial crash in 2008 because of its more secluded/less interdependent nature and the presence of large firms like Aviva in the city[[/note]] – the closest American CulturalTranslation might be the more exaggerated depictions of the DeepSouth.[[note]]Which is ironic, since East Anglia was the main source of the Puritan migration to New England... whose descendants in turn settled much of the northern tier of the US, and extended into Northern California. In other words, the culture that East Anglian migrants established in America is the polar opposite of the Deep South![[/note]] This 'otherness' is humorously acknowledged by the inhabitants, who have an old and self-deprecating saying: someone or something is ''"normal for Norfolk"''.[[note]]Allegedly, hospital doctors would add "NFN" to local patients' notes as a discreet way of saying that the patient wasn't suffering from brain damage, they were just naturally like that...[[/note]] 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 Norfolk's county town and shares many of Norfolk's stereotypes (though it's obviously not quite so rustic). It also bucks a ''lot'' of these stereotypes, not being the backwater it's often shown as but in reality being a vibrant cultural city with a large young population due to the presence of the [[UsefulNotes/BritishUnis University of East Anglia]], a bustling city centre and quite a few large employers such as Aviva, Marsh, the BBC, ITV and Naked Wines. Famous for being the fictional home of Franchise/AlanPartridge.
** ''Great Yarmouth'': An old seaside resort town situated on the east coast, slightly north of Lowestoft.
** ''King's Lynn'': A medium sized town situated slightly outside the fens and just south of the Wash, a roughly square shaped bay fed by four rivers.
** ''Thetford'': A small town near Thetford Forest, one of England's largest forests, noted as the birthplace of Creator/ThomasPaine.

* '''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 the traditional rival of Norwich (which is slightly larger and has city status).
** ''Lowestoft'': An old seaside resort town situated on the east coast slightly south of Great Yarmouth.
** ''Bury St Edmunds'': A medium sized town named after [[Myth/StEdmundOfEastAnglia St Edmund]], an East Anglian king who was martyred fighting the [[UsefulNotes/{{Denmark}} Danes]] after he refused to renounce Christ.
** ''Felixstowe'': Great Britain's 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 UsefulNotes/OliverCromwell was from.

* '''Peterborough''', in Cambridgeshire (previously Northamptonshire), is supposedly the gateway to East Anglia (depending which direction you're coming from, obviously). The city has been important since the Middle Ages (having gained city status in 1541) but expanded greatly in the 1960s after being designated a new town; it remains one of the country's fastest growing cities.

* '''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 'UsefulNotes/{{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 in the late 1700s and early 1800s and is now some of the most fertile farmland in the country, along with being exceptionally flat. Most of the area's towns are built on high land which formed islands in the marsh, the most notable of these being 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 UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion. As a result the area is more pro-UKIP than most of the UK, and the Fenland town of Ramsey became the first town council to be run by UKIP. The district council of Fenland was one of the top ten councils in the ''entire United Kingdom'' to vote to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum.

* '''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.

* ''Series/{{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 SceneryPorn. It's also one of the few series to at least ''try'' to get the Norfolk accent right, although not everyone can quite manage it.
** Given this, it's hardly surprising that Creator/StephenFry is from Norfolk (raised in a village outside Reepham[[note]]pron. ''Reefham''. Just so you know.[[/note]]).
* Music/DinosaurPlanet is also set in Norfolk.

* Surprisingly little rock or pop music of note comes out of East Anglia. The Singing Postman[[note]]of Ipswich [[/note]] and some members of Music/PinkFloyd including Music/SydBarrett[[note]]variously born and raised in Cambridge, where Barrett also spent his long reclusive post-retirement years[[/note]] in the 1960's, Brian Eno [[note]]of Woodbridge, Suffolk [[/note]] and Olivia Newton-John[[note]]who although raised in Australia, was born in Cambridge[[/note]] in the 1970's, Nick Kershaw[[note]]from Bristol but brought up in Ipswich[[/note]] in the 1980's, Cathy Dennis[[note]]of Norwich[[/note]] in the 1990's, spoof folkies The Kipper Family, Music/BethOrton [[note]]born and raised in Dereham, Norfolk before moving to London in her teens[[/note]] Music/TheDarkness [[note]]of Lowestoft, Suffolk[[/note]], SpaceRock band Music/UndergroundZero[[note]]of Norwich and various North Norfolk villages[[/note]], Music/EdSheeran[[note]]who although born in West Yorkshire, was raised in Suffolk[[/note]].... and that's pretty much it. Oh, and, hilariously enough, Suffolk is the home of Music/CradleOfFilth, with Dani Filth himself being based in Ipswich. This is a fact that [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/8239258/Suffolk-tourist-board-embarrassed-after-metal-band-Cradle-of-Filth-voted-countys-greatest-icon.html seems to embarass]] the local tourism boards, which want absolutely nothing to do with them.

The name of the area derives its name from the Kingdom of the East Angles, the Angles being one of the Germanic tribes that invaded Britain after the Romans withdrew in the fifth century (they also gave their name to England as a whole). Archaeological evidence suggests that East Anglia experienced the earliest settlement by these people, meaning that the area actually has a fairly strong claim to being the first place in the world where (Old) English was spoken. Oh, and back when it was a kingdom, the Angles living there were divided into the "north folk" and "south folk." Guess what those names became?

* ''Series/TheDetectorists'' takes place in the fictional town of Danebury, northern Essex, which some consider to be part of East Anglia. Even more so because it's actually filmed in Suffolk.

Also the [[UsefulNotes/Tornadoes tornado]] capital of the British Isles.

** ''Norwich'': With a population of about 200,000, Norwich is the largest city in both Norfolk and East Anglia. It is Norfolk's county town and shares many of Norfolk's stereotypes (though it's obviously not quite so rustic). It also bucks a ''lot'' of these stereotypes, not being the backwater it's often shown as but in reality being a vibrant cultural city with a large young population due to the presence of the [[UsefulNotes/BritishUnis University of East Anglia]], a bustling city centre and quite a few large employers such as Aviva, Marsh, the BBC, ITV and Naked Wines. Famous for being the fictional home of Series/AlanPartridge.

* Series/AlanPartridge not only comes from Norwich, as noted above, but tends to retreat there during his career's down-slumps.

** ''Norwich'': With a population of about 200,000, Norwich is the largest city in both Norfolk and East Anglia. It is Norfolk's county town and shares many of Norfolk's stereotypes (though it's obviously not quite so rustic). It also bucks a ''lot'' of these stereotypes, not being the backwater it's often shown as but in reality being a vibrant cultural city with a large young population due to the presence of the [[UsefulNotes/BritishUnis University of East Anglia]], a bustling city centre and quite a few large employers such as Aviva, Marsh, the BBC, ITV and Naked Wines. Famous for being the fictional home of [[Series/AlanPartridge Alan Partridge]].

* '''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 [[note]]it has to be said, not entirely inaccurately - King's Lynn in particular was historically one of the biggest and most important towns in the country, thanks largely to the port, but TheIndustrialRevolution pretty much left the entire county behind; on the flip side of this, the likes of Norwich were left relatively unscathed by the financial crash in 2008 because of its more secluded/less interdependent nature and the presence of large firms like Aviva in the city[[/note]] – the closest American CulturalTranslation might be the more exaggerated depictions of the DeepSouth.[[note]]Which is ironic, since East Anglia was the main source of the Puritan migration to New England... whose descendants in turn settled much of the northern tier of the US, and extended into Northern California. In other words, the culture that East Anglian migrants established in America is the polar opposite of the Deep South![[/note]] 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 Norfolk's county town and shares many of Norfolk's stereotypes. It also bucks a ''lot'' of these stereotypes, not being the backwater it's often shown as but in reality being a vibrant cultural city with a large young population due to the presence of the [[UsefulNotes/BritishUnis University of East Anglia]], a bustling city centre and quite a few large employers such as Aviva, Marsh, the BBC, ITV and Naked Wines. Famous for being the fictional home of [[Series/AlanPartridge Alan Partridge]].

** ''Thetford'': A small town near Thetford Forest, one of England's largest forests. Birthplace of ThomasPaine.

* '''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 status 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.

!!In fiction

* Surprisingly little rock or pop music of note comes out of East Anglia. The Singing Postman[[note]]of Ipswich [[/note]] and some members of Music/PinkFloyd including Music/SydBarrett[[note]]variously born and raised in Cambridge, where Barrett also spent his long reclusive post-retirement years[[/note]] in the 1960's, Brian Eno [[note]]of Woodbridge, Suffolk [[/note]] and Olivia Newton-John[[note]]who although raised in Australia, was born in Cambridge[[/note]] in the 1970's, Nick Kershaw[[note]]from Bristol but brought up in Ipswich[[/note]] in the 1980's, Cathy Dennis[[note]]of Norwich[[/note]] in the 1990's, spoof folkies The Kipper Family, Music/BethOrton [[note]]born and raised in Dereham, Norfolk before moving to London in her teens[[/note]] Music/TheDarkness [[note]]of Lowestoft, Suffolk[[/note]], SpaceRock band Music/UndergroundZero[[note]]of Norwich and various North Norfolk villages[[/note]], Music/EdSheeran[[note]]who although born in West Yorkshire, was raised in Suffolk[[/note]].... and that's pretty much it.
** Hilariously enough, however, Suffolk is the home of Music/CradleOfFilth, with Dani Filth himself being based in Ipswich. This is a fact that [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/8239258/Suffolk-tourist-board-embarrassed-after-metal-band-Cradle-of-Filth-voted-countys-greatest-icon.html seems to embarass]] the local tourism boards, which want absolutely nothing to do with them.
* The [[TransatlanticEquivalent UK version]] of ''Series/SaleOfTheCentury'', produced by the local Creator/{{ITV}} company [[NameDrop Anglia Television]], used to open each show with the ambitious but underwhelming pronouncement "Live from Norwich, it's the ''Quiz Of The Week''!" (Anglia themselves were recognized for their famous [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u02ZP0TiNU logo]], a sterling silver statue of a knight on horseback, rotating and carrying a lance with the "Anglia" name emblazoned on the pennant; it was retired in 1988 in favor of a new "flag" [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_uX_z1zbSs logo]], where east-facing triangles are arranged to form an abstract "A", with the animation showing the flag forming from different segments; it was eliminated in 1999 for the various ITV generic looks.)
** Spoofed in radio comedy show ''Radio/TheBurkissWay'' for its provincialism:
-->''And now from Anglia TV! Live, from our studios at an incompletely converted abbatoir in Norwich!''
--> ''Anglia TV. Serving the East of England right.''
--> ''Anglia TV. Sponsored by the miracle fertiliser Dung-K.''

* Where the main character of ''Series/ImAlanPartridge'' was supposed to have been born.
* In ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials'', the Fens were not drained and the Gyptians (alternate universe Romani, who travels in barges instead of caravans) took over the land to be their capital city.
* Dr Malcolm Bradbury's novel ''The History Man'', is a thinly autobiographical account where a character stalks the campus of what in the 1970's would have been a "new" university. The book is a VERY thin disguise of the [[UsefulNotes/BritishUnis University of EastAnglia, Norwich]], and some of its teaching staff - characters who can so easily be identified by anyone who was around UEA in the time period 1970-86. In fact, the BBC got to film part of their TV adaptation at UEA....

* Surprisingly little rock or pop music of note comes out of East Anglia. The Singing Postman[[note]]of Ipswich [[/note]] and Music/PinkFloyd and their founder-member Music/SydBarrett[[note]]of Cambridge, where Barrett spent his long reclusive post-retirement years[[/note]] in the 1960's, Brian Eno [[note]]of Woodbridge, Suffolk [[/note]] and Olivia Newton-John[[note]]who although raised in Australia, was born in Cambridge[[/note]] in the 1970's, Nick Kershaw[[note]]from Bristol but brought up in Ipswich[[/note]] in the 1980's, Cathy Dennis[[note]]of Norwich[[/note]] in the 1990's, spoof folkies The Kipper Family, Music/BethOrton [[note]]born and raised in Dereham, Norfolk before moving to London in her teens[[/note]] Music/TheDarkness [[note]]of Lowestoft, Suffolk[[/note]], SpaceRock band Music/UndergroundZero[[note]]of Norwich and various North Norfolk villages[[/note]], Music/EdSheeran[[note]]who although born in West Yorkshire, was raised in Suffolk[[/note]].... and that's pretty much it.

* Surprisingly little rock or pop music of note comes out of East Anglia. The Singing Postman[[note]] Ipswich [[/note]] in the 1960's, Brian Eno [[note]]Woodbridge, Suffolk [[/note]] and Olivia Newton-John[[note]]although raised in Australia, was born in Cambridge[[/note]] in the 1970's, Nick Kershaw[[note]]From Bristol but brought up in Ipswich[[/note]] in the 1980's, Cathy Dennis[[note]]Norwich[[/note]] in the 1990's, spoof folkies The Kipper Family, Music/BethOrton [[note]]born and raised in Dereham, Norfolk before moving to London in her teens[[/note]] Music/TheDarkness [[note]]Lowestoft, Suffolk[[/note]], SpaceRock band Music/UndergroundZero[[note]]Norwich and various North Norfolk villages[[/note]], Music/EdSheeran[[note]]although born in West Yorkshire, was raised in Suffolk[[/note]].... and that's pretty much it.

* '''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.

* Dr Malcolm Bradbury's novel ''The History Man'', is a thinly autobiographical account where a MartyStu character stalks the campus of what in the 1970's would have been a "new" university. The book is a VERY thin disguise of the [[UsefulNotes/BritishUnis University of EastAnglia, Norwich]], and some of its teaching staff - characters who can so easily be identified by anyone who was around UEA in the time period 1970-86. In fact, the BBC got to film part of their TV adaptation at UEA....

* '''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 [[note]]it has to be said, not entirely inaccurately - King's Lynn in particular was historically one of the biggest and most important towns in the country, thanks largely to the port, but TheIndustrialRevolution pretty much left the entire county behind; on the flipside of this, the likes of Norwich were left relatively unscathed by the financial crash in 2008 because of its more secluded/less inter-dependent nature and the presence of large firms like Aviva in the city[[/note]] – the closest American CulturalTranslation might be the more exaggerated depictions of the DeepSouth. 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: