Slough

Borough in Berkshire, in the Southeast of England.

Once a rural area, Slough became heavily industrialised and is now a centre of trade and transport. In 1937, the Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman complained in verse: "Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough,/ it isn't fit for humans now". The town has been a symbol of ugly drabness ever since, for example as setting of The Office. Well-meaning attempts to clean its name (e.g. Betjemen's daughter's testimony that her father "regretted having ever written" the poem) seem to have met with little success so far.

Sources

• "Poetic Justice at last for Slough." BBC News 16 September 2006. 4 July 2012 <BBC>.
• http://www.slough.gov.uk/