Looking for the South East

Of all the British regions, the South East is the one whose conceptualisation is most awkward. It almost (but not quite) surrounds London, stretching from Southampton and Portsmouth in the south to Milton Keynes and Banbury in the north; and from Dover in the east to Reading, Newbury and Oxford in the west. The Government Office and the headquarters of the regional development agency are in resolutely suburban Guildford, perhaps reflecting the absence of any defining urban centre (apart from London) around which a regional identity might cohere.