W here is the heart of England? Traditionally, its centre is said to lie in the village of Meriden in Warwickshire. Geographically, though, England’s “true centre”, as Peter Ackroyd puts it in his history of the country, Foundation , is 20 miles further north, over the border into Leicestershire, on the land of a farm called Lindley Hall. Until recently, Ackroyd tells us, a family called Farmer lived there, which seems about right. But where is England’s heart spiritually? This, it seems to me, is a more interesting question. Both these shires have a fair claim; lands of Shakespeare and Tolkien, Jasper Carrott and Jamie Vardy. TS Eliot believed the poetic soul of England lay further east, “half-heard, in the stillness” of rural Cambridgeshire. Yet, having returned from a weekend just outside of Shrewsbury, I wonder whether the real heart of England is in Shropshire. I had only been to Shropshire once before. I went with my young children and so we got little chance to explore.…