Ten things you didn't know about... Dorset

Poole Harbour in Dorset is rated as Europe's largest natural harbour, and the world's second behind Sydney Harbour.

In 1896, Guglielmo Marconi broadcast the first ever radio signals, from the Haven Hotel at Sandbanks in Poole, Dorset, to the Isle of Wight, where the world's first permanent wireless transmitter was later built.

The Black Death, which claimed a third of Europe's population in just two years, arrived in England on 25 June 1348 at Melcombe, in Dorset, via a sailor returning from Gascony. From Melcombe and Weymouth, the plague spread to the rest of the country, eventually reaching the major cities, and didn't leave the country until after the Great Plague of the 1660s.

Life expectancy in Dorset is about two years longer than the national average.

The level of biodiversity in Dorset is staggering. It's now accepted that 90 per cent of all of the UK's bird species, 85 per cent of its mammals, 80 per cent of butterflies, 70 per cent of dragonflies—and all of its reptiles and amphibians—are found in the county.

Wytch Farm Oil Field, owned by BP, is Europe's largest onshore site in Europe. Set in an area of outstanding natural beauty on Dorset's south cost, near Poole, the design of the site incorporates a range of plants and structures to avoid spoiling the natural environment. Another site at Kimmeridge, on the Purbeck coast, has been pumping oil since 1959—and claims to be the oldest continuously operating well in the world.

Dorchester, the county town of Dorset, is a historic Roman settlement, and was also immortalised as Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, born in the nearby village of Higher Bockhampton.

Chesil Beach is 28 km long, 160 m wide on average, and up to 14 m in height, making it the country's largest tombolo, a landform that connects an island to the shore. The beach forms part of the Dorset and East Devon World Heritage Site, known as the Jurassic Coast, England's only natural World Heritage Site. And it was the name of Ian McEwan's award-winning novel—the writer got in trouble when he admitted he had taken some fossils from the beach as a memento, and had to return them.

John Cornwell, aka Smiley creator John le Carré, was born in Poole, Dorset, on 19 October 1931.