actually live in the place they would like to live if they could live there? [If you get me]
I would live somewhere else if I could, not that I dislike where I am, but if it were possible I'd move tomorrow.
As for recommending where I am living, I can't really point to anything that you couldn't get elsewhere. So I wont try.

One of the world's great cities and I'm fortunate enough to live here.

I live near them and they are marvellous. Chipping Campden should be somewhere everyone visits at least once.

The Kings Hotel does a great fish and chips.

Nah. Kidding.

If you dont love the city your in...move.
Recently voted best city on the world for live music. Not sure I agree but nice to be noticed.

No. Hear me out.

I live in a small town with very low crime levels, 30 minutes from Glasgow, with remarkably good nightlife for its size, an airport which can get me to Barcelona in 2 hours from my door, low house prices which mean I live in a place I couldn't afford elsewhere, nice neighbours, no vandalism, strangers say hello in the street and theres a giant cat which greets me every morning. And the people in shops greet me by name. Plus its, thanks to the Gulf stream, the warmest and sunniest place in Scotland which, admittedly isnt saying much. I have a palm tree in my garden as a result. Seriously.

Its not bad.

One of the words in foreign languages most of us know is the word for death.

New arrivals deplane in Prestwick to be greeted by the word "Dead" emblazoned across the airport bright pink 20 foot letters.

Presumably this is so Dundee isnt too much of a dissapointment.

Speaking as a fellow Ayrshireman, it is a very nice place to have grown up. The coast is lovely, watching coverage of the Open at Turnberry had me pining for the place! However, the best place to live in Britain? I don't know.
I could be similarly nice about Stirling, where I stayed for six years. Nice town, within easy reach of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and an easy train's ride home after gigs. Surrounded by the lovely Forth Valley, and two of Scotland's most famous attractions as landmarks - Stirling Castle and Wallace Monument. And the Highlands just up the road.
I hate the Prestwick Airport slogan as well. So 'Rab C' ... and Prestwick isn't even in Glasgow!

and move to Dublin. Greatest place in the world. Even without an economy.

I'd rank those places where I've spent at least a year in the following order

Bath
Bristol
Wells
London
Middlesbrough

Back in the annals of time when I was an avid plane spotter Prestwick offered untold mystery and an attraction that I never experienced first hand. The monthly magazine that all aircraft spotters subscribed to was Aircraft Pictorial. At the back of the magazine they listed unusual new arrivals at uk airports during the previous month. Prestwick almost always had the best entries - some Eastern bloc Antonov enroute to Cuba or such like. I never got to go there but years later having travelled to Scotland on a fairly regular basis I have never met anyone who has used the airport. All domestic flights are either Glasgow or Edinburgh which also seem to have taken over International too.
Favourite place to live is pretty subjective. I live in Lichfield and love it - nice Cathedral, great restaurants, semi rural but close enough to my beloved Birmingham which by the way is one of the most underrated cities in the country - just ask Bill Clinton.
Would suggest somewhere like Padstow as my idyll yet I am sure the flocks of summer tourists would drive me nuts.

...but I live in Glasgow's leafy west end and it's good. We have parks and cinemas and art galleries and a groovy University and some good pubs. And a Fopp.

However, if I could live anywhere in the UK, right now, I'd head north and west. Somewhere like Strontian or Arisaig, Gairloch or Poolewe, or into Argyll to Kilmelfort or Ford on Loch Awe. I could easily forego all the cinemas and restaurants and art for immediate access to enormous open spaces and all that lovely silence.

I live on the Northumbrian coast, and have honestly never wanted to live anywhere else.

I accept it wouldn't be for everyone, but then I wouldn't want everyone to come!

I reckon that the only requirement for 'the best place to live', is that you are content there.

Or to put it in hackneyed terms "One man's London is another man's Bamburgh"

if this flu epidemic wiped out 70% of the uk population then it would be a good place to live

stay where you are as this place is full of jeremykylerichardcurtisjeremyclarksondannydyer wannabes who worship jordan and peter fucking andre

but if you do, manchester(avoid salford and whythenshawe) and glasgow are great

Stunning pastoral scenery, miles of extroardinarily beautiful coastline.No need to go abroad in these cash strapped times.

I love living in Leeds. I'm back home from Elland Road within half an hour of the final whistle and the City Centre's great, some fantastic bars and restaurants. You can be out in wonderful contryside within half an hour but have all the convenience of a big city. If it has one drawback it is that not all bands stop off here - but with the re-opening of the T&C as the Academy things are looking up in this department too.

I'm not sure London is part of the UK in the same way as New York
is not really America

London is horrible in many ways - crowded, crime-ridden, uncaring, with extremes of poverty and unimagineable wealth side by side - but it is inclusive, vibrant, teeming with ideas and energy and re-invents itself constantly.

An organic entity as much as a place in the world. It is a world.

Sceptr'd Jewel of the south coast, it is great for so many reasons. Like..

..er..

..well..

..er.. because I live there. And I like it for many strange reasons. And I have a nice view over the Solent to the Isle of Wight.

Read some of Graham Hurley's excellent Farraday and Winter detective series and you'll get some local flavour.

I wouldn't recommend moving here to anyone. It has more than its fair share of crime and poverty, and the undesirables are rampant. I only remain here due to circumstance.

That said, like most places I'm sure, when the sun shines it takes on a certain glow, but more importantly, due to excellent motorway links, it is in easy reach of Manchester, Liverpool, Cheshire, the Dales, York, the Lake District, the Fylde Coast (Blackpool, notwithstanding) and North Wales.

I live in Sheffield, I like it very much and could not see me living anywhere else. Not necessarily the best place in the UK but my house looks onto open fields, I am 10 minutes from the centre and the same from the Peak district which is not too shabby.

I'm a Cornish lad, but I was born in Plymouth; I ended up living there as a student and I'm still there, 12 years later. Here are the pros:

• It's a city, but not so big that it's totally impersonal
• There's a good live music scene in the bars and clubs
• There's a lot of creativity in general (art, poetry, theatre)
• Rents are a lot cheaper than most cities
• When it's sunny, it's a very beautiful city, especially the Barbican area
• Inside 15 minutes I can be at the beach, in lush countryside, or standing on Dartmoor

All in all, I love it here.

... a nice leafy north part with lovely pubs (Prince Of Wales, Highgate Main Road, any massive members familiar with the area may well like them to). My flat is nicer than any of my previous ones and my bike ensures I avoid the worst of the misery of the place. I can say I'm more content here than I've been anywhere for a long time. As for the country I think the ISle Of Eigg is the lovliest place I have ever visited.

Steve Earle summed up my feelings. "I love the city and I love the countryside. It's the places inbetween I hate."

I like London, but it does tend to make its residents a bit myopic when it comes to the rest of the country. A typical London-based comedian will always tell a Tube-based story, while the rest of the country slightly sighs. Frank Skinner told a good story about that, when, at a Birmingham club, a cockney comic started a tale with: "you know what it's like when you're on the tube..." to which a member of the audience loudly retorted: "NO!"

As a northerner, many of my friends moved to the capital after University, only to spend the next 5 years complaining that everything is too expensive, and that they can never stay out late as they have to get the last tube back home.

Great place if you've got a bit of cash, mind.

... my friends moved to London, stayed about five years and fled when family appeared. I moved here in my thirties, hence why I remain.

Beautiful, understated landscape and peaceful to boot.

PROS
Great cultural attractions
Easy to get around
Not far from anywhere else (except bits that everywhere is far from)
The Balti triangle
The Lickey hills, Malverns all pretty close for scenery and greenery
And generally the people who live in Birmingham being just a bit more relaxed and practical about everything - though we have shootings and rough estates to put up against anyone else's
We ended up here through work but have grown to like it a lot

I consider myself fortunate to work from home in a pleasant small market town. First came here on a hiking trip when I was a student and set myself a plan to someday bring a family up in these parts. Sixteen years later after a decade in London and a few years in Sheffield I finally achieved my goal.

I agree with earlier comments that living in the country with easy access to city is the way to go.

Pros
Surrounded by great countryside and I do enjoy walking.
Excellent schools, these things really matter when nippers arrive.
Good local shops.I'm keen on my grub and we have excellent butcher/baker/greengrocer etc.
Virtually crime free.
Friendly neighbours
A couple of excellent pubs where I can usually expect to wander in and see at least one mate for a pint.
Close enough to Sheffield, Manchester and Nottingham to take in gigs and other culture.

Cons
Traffic gets a bit mad especially at this time of year.
Lack of eating out options - only so many pub meals anyone really wants.
It is very, very monocultural which is not necessarily giving the kids a real understanding of the rest of the country.

Lived there for 10 good years, first 5 were in this street:

http://www.jacqueline-hammond.com/photo_3978146.html

I think her painting conveys it nicely

It's home, which means quite a bit, but also it is a friendly city with great people, great architecture, great gigs, great restaurants, pubs, galleries and museums. And fantastic scenery 20 minutes away.

I spend a chunk of most working weeks away from home, and have done for many years : Sheffield, Birmingham, Port Talbot, Sheerness, Morecambe, Middlesbrough, Croydon, Gillingham, San Francisco, Southampton, Bristol - they're all OK, but I like the Dear Green Place best of all. (San Fran was good, though!!)

Where else will you see a tourist struggling with a backpack and a map, who has 2 locals trying to help him ? ("are you lost, son?")

Where else are you guaranteed a blether in the pub just because you looked like a bloke on his own who might want to sit down with some other blokes ?

Like Victor Kiam, I like it so much, I bought a house there. (And get to spend some time in it!!)

No contest. Leafy, civilised, easy to get into town, easy to get out, good pubs and nice people, including the regularly spotted Mark Ellen, Bruce Dickinson, Bill Bailey and Nick Lowe. I've even bumped into Jimmy Page popping into one of the local studios.

The only sour note is that perpetual faker Robyn Hitchcock trying desperately to look windswept, interesting and whimsical as he sups his coffee on the High Road. Just about the only sleb in Chiswick who screams 'look at me' with every fibre of his being.

hailing from East Kilbride, via Glasgow, via Manchester, I now live in Cleethorpes, 'the jewel of North East Lincolnshire'. The 'Hove' to Brighton's 'Grimsby', if you will.

Pros:
-Big skies
-daily proximity to beach (still a novelty for a (sub)urban child like me)
-abundance of fish & chip shops, some excellent. Good selection of Indian restaurants too.
-probably many more, but feeling in a profoundly negative frame of mind given Scotland's result tonight!

Cons:
-takes ages to get anywhere
-the above being compounded by the necessity to travel on the world's most boring and noisiest motorway, the M180
-as with Fraser's post about Brighton, a prevailing 'townie' atmosphere
-Overwhelmingly monocultural (aforementioned Indian restaurants notwithstanding)
-tide goes out for about a mile

The most visually stunning city centre I've ever seen (only slightly marred by the current tramworks). Great pubs and restaurants. A capital city, yet in many respects just a big village - you always see someone you know when you're up town.

Not as good for gigs as Glasgow, I concede - but Glasgow's just a short train journey away.

Oh, and there's some sort of festival going on at the moment. You may have heard of it.

Rolling green fields, babbling brooks and streams, the Solent, and the amazing New Forest.

Surely the most beautiful place in the country? And also, surely the idyllic part of England that Rupert Brooke described?

The Soldier
by Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

But it's rubbish so everybody stay away.

Please.

Some wag at Word has a view on this subject, if this truncated link from the newsletter is anything to go by...

snurl.com/notnorthampton

If you are a well-off pre-children couple or empty-nesters, living in a quality part of central London would be ideal.

Let's face it, for the time in-between it's the dull-but-important bits that matter: nice houses, decent schools, low crime, plenty of interesting and like-minded people. Find that and you've cracked it.

Clampetts to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am...

Antony Gormley's 100 naked sculptures of what appears to Irvine Welsh are on the beach at the bottom of our street. They make me very happy every day.

I grew up in a NI new town which made Milton Keynes, Livingstone, Skelmersdale etc look like Manhattan of a Saturday @ kicking out time.
It was started but never finished, a stalled social experiment which Thatcher proceeded to lay waste to and the Troubles pretty much took care of the rest. Only thing which kept me going was the tapes in the library. Beatles, Wah, Bunnymen, then buying The La's in IT Records and tapes eventually brought me to Merseyside.
In between made a stop off in Belfast/ Coleraine for university and New York, Philadelphia and New Jersey, mostly for drinking.
Pitched up in Liverpool and within minutes, literally, knew it was it. Worked on every newspaper and a few radio stations in the 'region' and I love the lovely, blousey, stridently contrary different nature of Scouseness and the fact that almost everyone else from outside hates it.
I think it's just great to 'get' somewhere, feel comfortable in it, just to know and love it.
Once you get the piss takey (no problem for someone from the north of Ireland), verbal, scoffing, surrealist nature of Merseyside, then you're home in a boat.
Which is why 100 naked men on a beach as a statement on emigration is perfect for the end of our Merseyside streets.

I live in :

BOSTON, Lincolnshire

famed for

Saturday Nights Alright For Fighting was written about it (some things never change)
It was recently named 'Obesity Capital Of The UK'
Elton John once played the Gliderdrome (and still they bang on about it)
They imprisoned the Pilgrim Fathers

I would like to live:

ANYWHERE ELSE!

Where i live now. End of the tram from Manchester. A few nice bars. Walking distance to Hale with nice restaurants etc.

In a few years we are planning to move around Garstang in Lancashire. Great countryside, quiet, not far from civilisation.

In the countryside, 20 minutes from Brighton, 90 minutes door-to-door to central London so gigs are no problem.

I can hear sheep on the South Downs from my garden and I can be in France in 5 hours via Newhaven for the holidays. 30 minutes to Gatwick airport for work trips and trains to London.

Can't think of anywhere I'd rather be...

So where am I?

nice.

Parks.
Restaurants.
Pubs.
Spillers.
Beaches.
Stadiums.
Museums.

Wife.

Harlow would be where they shoved the tube

Sitting in my garden in the sun yesterday got me thinking. Where I live is probably the best place to be.
At the southern foot of the North Downs, only 30 mins by train from CharingX, less than an hour to eurotunnel and the south coast and similar to major London Airports.
The gentle hum of the M25/M26 in the background lulling me to sleep.
All this and only 10 mins drive from work!

The history of any village, town or city is usually based around features that made it a good place to settle - maybe food was in plentiful supply, or the terrain made it easier to defend, or a river provided a good route for trade. Later it would be things like access to transport, jobs and cultural attractions.

I lived in a place which I won't name for fear of distracting from my argument. I arrived there at the start of October, and it rained every single day at least until the end of the year when I left. Not that soft, gentle rain like you get in hymns and poems, but horrible, cold, wet stuff that gets right through to your bones.

Three miserable months with my shoulders hunched up around my ears led me to my Alternative Theory of the Movement of Peoples:

Any resonance?

describes Croydon and the area around it.

We have mountains and sheep. What the hell else do you need .

I can vouchsafe that you absolutely would not want to move to the East Neuk of Fife. In particular, not the truly vile seaside resort of Elie, with its flaunting of sands, views, rock pools, pubs and restaurants, and its flagrant proximity to the well known den of iniquity St. Andrews.

No, nothing to see here. Move on.

I'm in with another vote for Manchester. I moved here 7 years ago to university, so have stayed long beyond my alloted 3. There are certainly some rough parts, but it's a big city and you don't really need to go into the areas you don't like. Culturally , we've got everything you could need I would think. Currently at the Didsbury end.