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In an age of new boundaries the old concise limits of East Anglia - Suffolk, Norfolk and the Isle of Ely - have been stretched alarmingly in order to accomodate weather forecasts, regional development schemes and TV programme planning. While not allowing, as these authorities sometimes do, that the area reaches upwards to Hull and across to Birmingham, it is possible to see that Essex - the East Saxons - and Cambridgeshire do share an affinity with the chief characteristics of the region, though for the East Anglian proper his country begins in the Stour Valley, rides steadily out to the chilly North Sea in a fine parabola of heath, shingle and marsh, until it reaches the Wash, and concludes in the geometrical sluices and peat of the Fens. This was the kingdom ruled by the Wuffingas, whose burial-ground at Sutton Hoo has thrown a very civilized light upon the Dark Ages. And before both the Roman and Anglo-Saxon conquests it was the highly populated kingdom of the Iceni and the Trinovantes
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