Derby is an exceptional and underrated city. It was an important centre
of the Midlands Enlightenment, boasting Dr Erasmus Darwin and John
Whitehurst FRS among its eighteenth-century residents. It produced an
artist of international repute in Joseph Wright ARA and has been a
centre for the production of fine porcelain and fine clocks for almost
three centuries. It was a county town for five centuries and was in its
Georgian heyday much admired by writers such as Daniel Defoe. Despite
the best endeavours of a peculiarly unappreciative and iconoclastic
bunch of city fathers over the years, many of its fine Georgian and
Regency features have managed to survive. In 90 pairs of photographs
ranging from 1765 to the present, Maxwell Craven has attempted to show
why it is still a city of which its citizens can be proud and how it has
changed, in places out of all recognition.