Bombs falling on Slough

"Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough/It isn't fit for humans now": so wrote the late poet laureate Sir John Betjeman, much to the chagrin of the local citizens...

The irony, of course, is that Betjeman wrote his infamous lines in the 'thirties, long before the Luftwaffe did its worst and well in advance of Slough's development after the war as a haven for bombed out Londoner's.

But poets are often prescient and the eventual expansion of the town seems to have been planned with one eye on Betjeman's nightmarish vision of suburban hell. If anything, they outdid him, adding grim concrete and metal blocks and a truly awful roundabout to his "air-conditioned bright canteens" and houses "for ninety-seven down".

Now, however, the powers-that-be are planning a redevelopment which will tear down a substantial section of the much-maligned town centre and replace it with something more alluring. A joint effort by the labour-controlled council and private developers, the project, code-named Heart of Slough, hopes to build 770,000 square feet of offices, a hotel, cinema, international conference centre, new restaurants, and that defining feature which no new development seems able to do without: a piazza.

The council are determined to exploit the town's excellent location close to London, the M4 and Heathrow airport. This happy confluence has already attracted some notable big names, among them Amazon.uk, Mars, and ICL. The new makeover will undoubtedly attract more. Whether it will inspire future poets to compose something less savagely satirical than Betjeman's lines remains to be seen.

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