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...