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| | When the first England met the third: XTC's "Skylarking" |
 | | In the 1930s, J.B. Priestley wrote in An English Journey about the "Three Englands"; the first England was the old, slow-to-change rural society, the second was the industrial North, and the third was the emerging suburbia, the scene of the new affluence of the era, and the greatest immersion in the emerging American popular culture. |
 | | Huge parts of Hertfordshire and Essex, and further out the areas surrounding towns like Northampton, Peterborough and Swindon, became fascinating patchworks of the first England and the third, with the divide between the two sometimes possible to pin down to individual points on certain streets. |
 | | In other words, it was not an experience that could be easily tied to either the first nor the third England; it could not be categorised. |
| www.elidor.freeserve.co.uk /skylarking.htm (959 words) |
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