Hertfordshire is full of stories. The county’s proximity to London attracts the great, the good and those less so: Hertfordshire was once home to saints such as St Alban, St Thomas More and the only English Pope, Nicholas Breakspear. Such virtuous figures pose a sharp contrast to those involved in the Hertford elections of time gone by, which were once declared the most corrupt in the country!

It is no secret that Elizabeth I became queen at Hatfield House in south Hertfordshire – but did you know that her father, Henry VIII, fled a plague-ridden London to a nearby village while waiting for his first divorce to come through? And that just around the corner, 400 years later, engineers were secretly developing the bombers that helped win the Second World War?

There are so many tales to be told about this amazing county that it is impossible to squeeze them all between these covers but open The Little Book of Hertfordshire at any time or any place and you can expect to be amused, entertained and intrigued.