Roger Hargreaves lived in Lower Sunbury on the River Thames on the next to Richmond upon Thames borough boundary, and wrote his Mr. Men books. Trumpton (1967) was based on Plumpton, East Sussex, with other titles in the series based on nearby villages; Trumpton was actually shot by Gordon Murray's company in Crouch End, London. Gerry Anderson's AP Films filmed Thunderbirds on the Slough Trading Estate near to the site's cooling towers, being first broadcast in 1965. Mary Tourtel from Canterbury created Rupert Bear. Frank Hampson, of Dan Dare, drew all his pictures when he lived in the east of Epsom, off the A2022. The first multiplex cinema in the UK was in Milton Keynes, in the mid-1980s.
Elgar wrote his Cello Concerto at Fittleworth, West Sussex, in 1919. Isaac Watts, a hymn writer from Southampton, wrote When I Survey the Wondrous Cross and O God, Our Help in Ages Past. John Goss, who wrote the hymn tune for Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven, came from Fareham. At Chalfont St Giles, Milton finished Paradise Lost. Olney in Buckinghamshire is known for the Olney Hymns - Amazing Grace, and the composer of the tune of Once in Royal David's City. Buckinghamshire's E. L. James has the UK record for the fastest-selling paperback of all time.
Pimm's was invented by James Pimm of Kent in the 1820s. Banoffee pie was invented in 1972 in Jevington in East Sussex. Maria Ann Smith from Sussex emigrated to Australia and created the Granny Smith apple. Horticulturist Richard Cox lived in Colnbrook, where he bred his Cox's Orange Pippin, a popular apple. Elizabeth David, a cookery writer who revolutionised the nations's home cooking in the 1950s, came from Sussex.
Images for kids
Tom Tower of Christ Church, Oxford
Vodafone HQ north of Newbury; it arrived as Racal-Vodafone in 1983, when Bayer also arrived; Vodafone is the world's second-biggest mobile phone company (the world's largest privately owned) with £40 billion of revenue and 464 million customers, and profits of £11bn; it has around 19M UK customers, and by value makes up about 5% of the FTSE 100
Virgin Atlantic on Manor Royal in Crawley; Virgin has 12 747s compared to BA's 56, but both have around 18 of the new Airbus 380; Gatwick now flies 40 million passengers a year, a world record for a single-runway airport
NATS headquarters at Swanwick; NATS does about 5,300 flights a day - all flights south of Manchester, with 5,000 employees, with around 100 air traffic controllers at Swanwick; the building cost £623m when it opened in 2002, and was five years late, and cost five times as much as the original estimate; it has the National Airspace System written in the 1960s in the JOVIAL language, which is to be replaced in 2016
South East England Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.