Why a Northants town lies at the heart of England

The BBC came to interview me for a forthcoming programme on the North-South question - ours, not the one they worry about at the World Trade Organisation. Wasn't there once an idea of moving the capital to Yorkshire, I was asked? Yes there was. On 8 December 1962, the Economist proposed a new city, Elizabetha, on Marston Moor: a soggy site between York and Leeds that was the location of a Civil War battle. Paul Barker recalled it in Prospect magazine on the fortieth anniversary.