Kent is a county in Southeast England. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London. Kent has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the River Thames estuary. The ceremonial county of Kent includes the unitary authority of Medway and the administrative county of Kent. Kent has a nominal border with France halfway through the Channel Tunnel. Maidstone is its county town and its only city is Canterbury.

Kent is widely known as The Garden of England

Kent has provided inspiration for several notable writers and artists. Canterbury's religious role gave rise to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a key development in the English language. The father of novelist Charles Dickens worked at the Chatham Dockyard; in many of his books, the celebrated novelist featured the scenery of Chatham, Rochester, and the Cliffe marshes. The landscape painter J. M. W. Turner spent part of his childhood in the town of Margate in East Kent, and regularly returned to visit it throughout his life. The East Kent coast inspired many of his works, including some of his most famous seascapes. During the late 1930s, Nobel Prize-awarded novelist William Golding worked as a teacher at Maidstone Grammar School, where he met his future wife Ann Brookfield.

The county has three universities; Canterbury Christ Church University, University of Kent, with campuses in Canterbury and Medway, and University of Greenwich, with sites at Woolwich, Eltham and Medway. Whereas much of the UK adopted a comprehensive education system in the 1970s, Kent County Council (KCC) and Medway Unitary Authority are among around fifteen local authorities still providing wholly selective education through the eleven-plus high schools and grammar schools. Together, the two Kent authorities have 38 of the 164 grammar schools remaining in the UK.