The city where a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned in a nerve agent attack has been named the best place to live in the UK.
Salisbury took the title in The Sunday Times 2019 list.
One of the judges said the Wiltshire city had shown a “real collective spirit” in the wake of the poisonings that brought it to global attention a little over a year ago.
Ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia survived the Novichok attack, which has been blamed on the Russian GRU intelligence agency, although the country has denied involvement.
The incident later claimed the life of Dawn Sturgess, who died after coming into contact with a perfume bottle believed to have been used in the attack on the Skripals and then discarded.
Helen Davies, The Sunday Times Home editor, said: “Salisbury has shown real collective spirit in dealing with a chemical attack that saw the cathedral city become the centre of world headlines for all the wrong reasons.
“There are still parts of the city where the clean-up continues, but to bounce back and be even stronger is a sure sign of a very special community, which is one of the reasons we have chosen Salisbury as the best place to live in Britain in 2019.
“It remains a divinely attractive and welcoming place. It’s handy for coast, countryside and London, has some of the best schools in the southwest, a great market and it’s very strong culturally, too.”
The Isle of Dogs in the borough of Tower Hamlets was named the best place to live in Greater London, Dundee the top place to live in Scotland, Crickhowell in Powys was judged the cream of the crop in Wales, while Holywood in County Down came out in front for Northern Ireland.
The judging panel used their own expert knowledge alongside statistics, including house prices, provided by Habito and TwentyCi.
Previous winners of the top title in The Sunday Times Best Places to Live include York last year, Bristol in 2017 and Hampshire in 2016.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel