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 of its fine Georgian and Regency features have managed to survive. In 90 pairs of photographs ranging from 1765 to the present, Maxwell Craven has attempted to show why it is still a city of which its citizens can be proud and how it has changed, in places out of all recognition.

Maxwell Craven has written extensively on architecture and antiques for the Georgian Group Journal, Country Life, and various local magazines. Whilst he has written extensively on the history of Derby and Derbyshire, on architecture and on the Midlands Enlightenment, his real love is for Roman history and post-Roman Britain. His most recent book is 'Magnus Maximus, a Neglected Roman Emperor and his British Legacy' and he has written a comprehensive guide to the Saxon Shore forts of Britain. He is a former chairman of Derby Conservation Area Advisory Committee, a member of Derby Cathedral FAC, a Trustee of Derby Bridge Chapel and the Derby Museums Trust, was Derby Museum Assistant Keeper of Archaeology and from 1982 Keeper of Antiquities. He was awarded an honorary DLitt.by the University of Derby; he was made MBE and elected FSA in 1999.