Where to find the worst-behaved people in Britain

Where are the worst-behaved people in Britain? Forty years ago, one would have said the Cotswolds; 80 years before that, East Sussex; and a century earlier, Hampshire, as told by Dame Jilly Cooper, Quentin Bell and, best of all, Jane Austen. These were, in their respective eras, places of isolation, a ripple too far from what we call the London onion and still immune to the city’s gravitational pull. Inhabitants lived in microcosms, away from scrutiny; one forgets that Charlbury boasted only a single train track until 2011.

Whether through urban expansion or the invasion of rural life, the society chronicled in Rivals — which returns to our screens on Wednesday — has all but gone. To where has it moved and has bad behaviour moved with it? Several contacts suggested yes, to Devon, although people in Devon deny this. East Anglia has also been floated because it is so hard to reach from London that it might as well be on the moon, yet still wealthy enough that debauchery tends to occur on a scale that even Rupert Campbell-Black would approve of.

Others believe, instead, that the halcyon days of Rutshire — be it a byword for Gloucestershire or further afield — are little more than make believe. When asked how he remembers the equine societies of Jilly Cooper’s heyday, leading racehorse trainer Andrew Balding, of Park House Stables in Kingsclere, says such a world never existed in the way we wish to remember it. The antics described in Rivals, if seldom exaggerated, ‘were not happening every day as in Jilly’s novels,’ he laughs. Nonetheless, he recognises that there has been a shift in the culture. ‘Social media has changed the landscape she was writing about’ — for ‘straying, even occasionally, is more likely to be publicised.’

‘Growing up in the Cotswolds of the 1970s and 1980s was a wonder,’ adds an estate proprietor near Chipping Norton who is now in his sixties — and prefers to remain anonymous. ‘It was, for our age group, a free-flowing experience unbounded by too many rules... If two friends broke up, there was none of the present-day purdah and the next relationships were expected to start immediately.’

If the expansion of the London onion (and commensurate puritanism) has accelerated in the era of 5G and internet sleuths, another theory suggests that, although Rutshire truly was a den of iniquity, those who previously could be relied upon to keep bad behaviour alive now tend to be the stoic types. Jockeys, the same are athletes across the board, are today more likely to be sober in a bid to extend both their winnings and careers. The cost-of-living crisis comes for us all, in the end.

Instead, old locals say, bad behaviour in what we once called Rutshire has been replaced by sordidness of a different kind. Clout-chasing near Chipping Norton is no longer about taking many lovers, but more about how many offshore trusts one happens to benefit from. If Cooper’s sexual conquistadors were hardly paragons of virtue, at least Campbell-Black and his fellow misfits weren’t thinking about tax avoidance. There was too much fun to be had.

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This feature originally appeared in the November 4, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.