A "pretty, chocolate-boxy" village 15 minutes from Watford has been lavished with praise and put forward as a contender to be the UK's town of culture.
The Guardian newspaper asked a panel of its writers to make a selection for the title, with Peter Bradshaw picking Letchmore Heath.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy kicked off the UK's search for its first town of culture late last year, declaring that too many towns have been “written out of the national story”.
It is similar to the cities of culture programme, a title most recently bestowed on Bradford.
Making the case for Letchmore Heath, Bradshaw writes: “This pretty, chocolate-boxy place, with its pond, pub and village green on which Morris dancers disport themselves, is a short drive from Elstree Studios and is often used for film and TV shoots.
"Most notably, the 1960 cult sci-fi movie Village of the Damned was shot there (based on John Wyndham’s novel The Midwich Cuckoos), in which the village’s women mysteriously give birth to a weird clutch of blonde-haired, dead-eyed children: the advance party of a conquering alien master race.
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"All of the village’s sweetly picturesque sights assumed an eerie dimension after that."
The winning town will get £3.5 million to help it develop a cultural programme in the summer of 2028.
Other suggestions made by writers include Ramsgate in Kent and Falmouth in Cornwall.
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