I prefer concentrating on man-made beauty rather than natural beauty of scenery so my choices will reflect that to some extent.
There are 2 places in England that especially come to mind, as somebody else had already said. They are York and Cambridge.
York is an ancient walled city (although the city centre does go outside the walls too) with history to do with the Romans and the Vikings:
http://www.yortime.org.uk/u3a/York.jpg York Minster is the largest cathedral in Northern Europe. It's got loads of pubs (they say 1 for every day of the year and, amazingly, it seems that it may have at least 200), restaurants, cafes, hotels and a fair few shops. It's got a national railway museum (the other being in London), other museums near to the Minster and the Yorvik Museum in which you travel around on a ride that shows your Viking York.
The reasons why Cambridge is worth visiting is to go on a tour around the colleges, to visit the Fitzwilliam Museum and to go for a punt ride down The Backs to take in the combination of rural and college sights:
http://www.cityofcambridge.info/images/Cambridge.jpg
It hasn't got a reputation for having a lot to do outside of studying and punting but it's got a few shops that feels like a scaled down York in a way. If you don't want to look at many colleges, though, you might feel that you've seen enough of Cambridge in a day or 2.
As a third choice I would say Durham. Durham, on the face of it, seems a little bit like York but Durham has less of that quaint medieval feel and less nooks and alleys to explore than York. Durham has a bit more of a rugged beauty in places, with woodland along the river, and the castle and the cathedral on top of a rock that is looped by the river Wear:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ate_Bridge.jpg
Like Cambridge, it's small and you may feel that you've seen enough in a day or 2.
Durham has a few modern pubs/restaurants but very little in the way of quaint, off the beaten track, pubs or restaurants in its centre.
York would definitely be the best choice out of all of these for a romantic evening.
Regarding Leicester- great place to look at modern architecture actually. On Leicester University's campus there's James Stirling's Engineering building, famous in architectural circles. But it would, unfortunately, be seen as a relatively unusual tourist choice.
Going on holiday, interrailing, broadening one's horizons and weekends in Skegness
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Re: Top 10 places to visit in England outside of London?
