50 Gems of East Kent: The History & Heritage of the Most Iconic Places

Great book, useful for exploring the under-rated county of Kent

Starting with Britain’s only internationally recognised desert at Dungeness, Paul Harris takes us on a trawl through what he considers to be the 50 best places to visit in East Kent. Having visited many of the locations included, so I can relate to what is within the pages, and can agree with his choice of most of them. The idea is a decent one but the execution leaves much to be desired.A book such as this which is trying to appeal to those interested in the region should whet their appetite by having good photographs and text that doesn’t keep mentioning when the author went there and where his mum lives, etc. None of that will improve any potential visitor’s enjoyment of the area. As for those accompanying photographs, some are just pointless. Harris mentions two fine Victorian hotels in Folkestone Leas (now flats) yet deems to show a photo of an information board instead. St Margaret’s Bay has a nine foot high statue of Sir Winston Churchill and a big white house where Ian Fleming once lived and probably wrote ‘Moonraker’, so he chooses to show fields atop chalk cliffs which could be anywhere.There are also a couple elsewhere showing fields and greenery but the quality of both the printing and the pictures themselves, other than the one in the Shell Grotto, which looks like it was taken by someone who knew what they were doing, are very poor throughout this book, so the reader gains nothing from them. Also, I can’t help thinking this would have been better with half the number of places and double the amount of text for each. And leaving out any mention of his mum and the rest of his family history. And decent photographs.

Great book given for a present and it contained some great places to visit