Swindon

Swindon is a large town of Wiltshire, England, located in the South West of the United Kingdom (between Bristol and London). Swindon lies on the M4 Corridor — Sunrise Strip — part of the UK. The town is easily accessible from either junction 15 or 16 of the M4 motorway, or by rail (Swindon Station). With a population of 180,000, Swindon is often cited as a "boom town" and new housing continues to be built. It is one of the fastest growing towns in the UK (along with Milton Keynes) and has a very low unemployment rate. It is in the borough of Swindon, which has been a unitary authority since 1998.

Swindon in fiction

• Books set in Swindon include The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon (in which a character describes it as "the arse of the world") and the "Thursday Next" novels by Jasper Fforde. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, also ate lunch in the town in the novel The Boscombe Valley Mystery.