The Ceremonial Counties of England… Ranked!

A deeply subjective guide to the shires, starting at the top and finishing, of course, at the bottom. We brook no arguments.

1. North Yorkshire: The biggest and the best, with cathedrals, churches, cities, curries. Dales and Moors are both tip-top. Home to many arseholes, but nowhere is perfect.
2. Herefordshire: Both the Special Air Service and various 60s survivors use the glorious rolling hills to treat their PTSD. Each of its towns is somehow magnificent, and the people are gracious.
3. Northumberland: Welcome to Raoul Moat country. A deeply mystical place: think of the rowan tree and the pele tower – some lovely pubs too. Bamburgh Beach is as good as England gets.
4. Somerset: Crusties, hippies, Notting Hillbillies, journalists writing ponderous thinkpieces about ‘gentrification’ in Bruton, there is much to dislike about Zummerzet, but there is an undeniable charm to the place.
5. Cornwall: Loaded with pagan magic, and a palpable sense of wonder (and poverty). Just outside the top spots on account of its profound unfriendliness.
6. Derbyshire: A heady mix of the nation’s finest landscapes – the Peak District – and its most depressing branches of Wetherspoons in the country (The Babington Arms, Derby).
7. Shropshire: Grooming gangs, borderlands and a dairy industry. Lots to love here. Betjeman was right – Ludlow is England’s finest town.
8. Suffolk: The wool towns of Lavenham and so on are remarkably well-preserved and somehow not twee. The coastline, however, is patient zero for the seasonal molestation of our prettiest countryside towns by the capital’s worst people.
9. Dorset: Operatic coastline but lacking in identity and general ‘vibe’ since the death of Thomas Hardy. Awash with elderly Lib Dems, it is a paradise only for probate solicitors.
10. Gloucestershire: An accent that makes the comedy yokel from Clarkson’s Farm sound like the Queen Mother, more actually posh people than you would ever believe, and the fact they had to knock down Fred West’s murder house to stop it from becoming a shrine. Riddled with fascinating complexities.
11. Hampshire: The New Forest with its ponies and supercars and beaches is heavenly, and there is an earthy grottiness to Southampton and Portsmouth that we approve of.
12. East Yorkshire: Site of the much-­maligned Hull, the hilariously named Beverley and an accent that falls somewhere between Geordie and Martian. Surprisingly great pubs, and Cromwell hated the place: it’s basically our Galway.
13. Kent: The closest the English county system has to embodying bipolar disorder, which really is saying something. A mix of astonishing history with breathtaking ugliness, and that’s just the people.
14. Lancashire: Did you know that the Forest of Bowland was the late Queen’s favourite place in England? Lancashire has it all, not least historic association with Manchester, the worst city in the country, perhaps even the world.
15. Essex: Maybe the most sui generis county in England. A roiling hotbed of extremism and casual violence. Thomas Skinner is not the best PR for a place that has been the butt of jokes for decades.
16. East Sussex: Beset by children called Merlin and Oriole, and three-month waiting lists for a Sunday roast. Locals are forced to create their own fun with pagan festivals featuring zero health-­and-safety, and the silly but addictive pub game of toads.
17. Oxfordshire: Just don’t take it seriously and you can have a passable time. Good for a weekend visit but you would have to be mad to live there, just mad.
18. West Sussex: Maybe the grandest shire in England. Feels much more like an adjunct of London than the other Home Counties. It is, you will admit, an outrage that the Downs are a National Park.
19. Nottinghamshire: Perhaps the most threatening vibe of any county in England? The countryside – the bits that aren’t just motorway hard shoulder – is lovely though.
20. Wiltshire: Salisbury is lovely but Swindon definitely isn’t. Very straight-shooting Tory elsewhere.
21. Leicestershire: Like Oxfordshire, but without the crackers rich people and celebrities, and therefore less interesting. Has great potential, which is currently being squandered.
22. Devon: Many regard it as one of England’s finest counties. They are wrong. Here, unfriendliness borders into hostility and there is a simpering, pathetic hatred of outsiders, or ‘grockles’ as the Devonian wits have it. Cream teas, it should also be stated, are revolting.
23. Norfolk: A deeply overrated place. Takes ages to get there and not that exciting when you arrive. Flat, flinty and feudal. The beach at Holkham is nice but there are beaches elsewhere.
24. Lincolnshire: Both co-founders of this publication are Yellowbellies, but that doesn’t blind us to the county’s declassé politics, alas. Too vast, too remote, too flat.
25. Berkshire: Think how many embarrassing sitcoms have been situated here: Ali G, The Office, Harry and Meghan at Frogmore Cottage.
26. Cheshire: Filled with tiny women driving massive cars badly, a wasteland of shopping villages and motorway service stations. Michael Owen country, which tells you all you need to know. Chester itself is divine.
27. South Yorkshire: A conurbation of West Yorkshire.
28. West Yorkshire: See above.
29. Hertfordshire: The only English county to feature in Dante’s Inferno, as a place of eternal punishment for men in sales who call each other ‘geez’.
30. Rutland: The clue is in the name. Miles from London but, still, somehow, feels like a glorified suburb of the city.
31. Warwickshire: Bardland used to be one of England’s premier counties, but it is vastly diminished in status of late. Wonderful in its history; terrible in the present moment.
32. Cambridgeshire: Home to the slightly less obnoxious of the two oldest universities, a very nice cathedral in Ely and some very pleasant river-adjacent scenery. Loses points for staggering income inequality and an aggressive flatness that creates biting winter winds and a model-village feel to its various towns and villages.
33. Cumbria: Invented by the Victorians and only maintained for the Americans and Chinese. Too rainy.
34. Worcestershire: A baffling county, part Birmingham overspill, part Stanley Baldwin rural fantasyland. It also contains the single most depressing place on planet Earth, Worcestershire Parkway Railway Station.
35. Buckinghamshire: You can either rawdog the suburbs or suffer silently in the Chilterns toytown villages. Genuinely eerie throughout.
36. Surrey: A historic county that has struggled to deal with the identity crisis created by London’s annexation of its northern half. While historic Surrey thus can claim parts of Lambeth, it also has to claim Richmond, and anyone who thinks modern Lambeth has anything to do with Surrey is insane.
37. Northamptonshire: England’s pancreas: long, thin and mostly thinking of ways to kill you. Oundle is particularly depressing.
38. Bedfordshire: You would expect it to be around here on the list, wouldn’t you?
39. Staffordshire: Supposedly has good pubs, but we’re not going to bother looking. Most people visit to go to Alton Towers for an immiserating family ‘day out’, never to return.
40. County Durham: Beautiful scenery and charming colliery villages cannot atone for the fact that it gave us two of the most destructive forces to civil society in 21st-century Britain: the University of Durham and Tony Blair.
41. The Isle of Wight: A place of genuine, giggling evil – it needs to slide into the sea, and now.

* We are missing Merseyside, Tyne and Wear, Bristol, Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and Greater London, for obvious reasons.