‘In 1961 modern Basingstoke was designated as an overspill town to cope with an expanding movement of people from London, and should not therefore be confused with new towns like Bracknell. Only ten years before, in 1951, Basingstoke had a population of sixteen thousand, and since the eleventh century, when as a chartered market site it was mentioned in the Domesday Book, the population here centred around the village of Basing, or Old Basing as we call it now. It is situated about forty miles west of London, a train journey of approximately forty minutes. At the train station early on weekdays two of the five platforms - platform numbers three and four - are packed with commuters awaiting either the direct London train or the stopping service.

 ‘During the nineteen sixties many historically significant buildings in Basingstoke town centre were destroyed and replaced with a grey concrete shopping mall, the brutal looking architecture of which symbolised the apparent soullessness of newly built towns such as Basingstoke. Our town has expanded into several massive residential estates and swallowed up small villages, attracted industry and commerce, capital investment and so on. These more recent developments led many people to believe that Basingstoke is merely a home for financiers and other boring occupations and it has become a humorous archetype symbolising the blandness and similarity of modern towns across the UK.

 ‘Names used to describe Basingstoke include Amazingstoke, Amazingjoke, Basingjoke, Blazingstoke, The Big Bag of Coke, Boringstoke, Blazin Smoke, The Holy Smoke, The Chavved-up Bloke, The Big Toke, Basingrad, Bastardstoke, The Big Joke, Thatchergrad, Doughnut City - on account of its roundabouts, Gaysingstoke and Chavstoke.   

 ‘Basingstoke exists in what I think is a particularly unfair environment and its government and citizens have to work hard to shed its old image, which people of little understanding continue to propagate, to the detriment of our town’s reputation and despite its recent economic, architectural, and cultural successes. As well as being a financial centre with the large glass-fronted Barclay Mercantile Building, Basingstoke serves as the location for the headquarters of the Automobile Association, and Sun Life Financial of Canada, both situated just a five minute walk east of the train station in Basing View. Fanum House or “AA Tower” is one of the tallest buildings between Basingstoke and New York.

            ‘For many years this town has attracted companies from fields as diverse as pharmaceutical manufacturing, scientific research and development, publishing, waste recycling and management, further and higher education and training, engineering, software development and aerospace. For example, the large Eli Lilly pharmaceutical research, production and packaging facility at Priestley Road, just downhill from Basingstoke General Hospital in the north of town, first opened in 1939, and has recently received £77 million for continued investment by the end of 2006, £25 million of which is earmarked for the upgrading of machinery and packaging equipment improvements. The main contractor for the upgrade project is Jacobs Engineering, a local firm, which is pretty cool. Even Boeing has a warehouse here. You can see it on the Reading to Basingstoke incoming rail line.

 ‘Aside from AA’s Fanum House and other architectural landmarks, Basingstoke is well known in literary circles, housing the famous Macmillan Publishers on Brunel Road, Houndmills. The Macmillan brothers, from the Isle of Arran, established the company in 1843, and during the 1960s Harold Macmillan became Chairman of the company after retiring from politics. Many of the books in your college library and on your bookshelves have been published here. Now, however, the Macmillan group is owned by a German company headquartered in Stuttgart, whose origins lie in a Stuttgart library founded by someone called Georg von Holtzbrinck, who is now dead.’

 Should anyone ever have the inclination to search through my bookcase they will notice that all of my books have been published in Basingstoke.  

 ‘Recently, in 2002, the Borough Council spent millions of pounds redeveloping the town centre, which now boasts 160 shops, 25 restaurants, the night club and sports centre plus the 3,000 capacity car park, 10 screen multiplex cinema and attractive open area seats with gas fuelled patio down-heaters, sturdy tables and mobile security patrols in an effort at trying to regenerate some cultural life into the area.

            ‘Local radio includes AM Basingstoke Radio, providing in-depth local news coverage and Kestrel-FM, the popular local broadcaster whose studio is situated in Paddington House in Festival Place which is where the Festival Place CCTV operation centre is located. The station first broadcast on 15 May 1998 and in association with the Milestone Group, who now own it, launched a free local weekly paper in 2000, called The Basingstoke Observer. The Observer enjoys a wide audience and over 20,000 copies are picked up from 155 pick-up points. The Basingstoke Gazette offers broad coverage of local affairs, its online edition is particularly useful as unlike the printed copy - which is only produced on Mondays and Fridays, with an additional midweek paper, the Basingstoke Extra, available on Wednesdays – it is available 24/7 at the touch of a button.

            ‘The Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council town centre security project, funded by a large Home Office grant, saw eight high-tech cameras placed across the Top of the Town that are now a valuable supplement to town centre policing, particularly at night. Appropriately used, recorded footage can help identify suspects and witnesses and provide instant evidence. CCTV as such is a way to reassure the public and give a sense of security; it’s also a valuable weapon against anti-social behaviour. Two main parties operate CCTV cameras across Basingstoke: the town centre management company, Grosvenor Limited, whose control room is, as I said, stationed on the upper floor of the shopping mall, and Basingstoke Police Basic Command Unit, whose control room at London Road is connected directly with Hampshire Constabulary’s Command Centre in Netley, Southampton, which is pretty cool.