You mention a British program. I do not know about the specific features you mention, but a British company called Serif used to make very highly-regarded DTP software.
I think they were bought by Corel
Edit: Serif are in the article, sorry
I think they were bought by Corel
Edit: Serif are in the article, sorry
Serif (makers of Affinity suite) were bought by Canva last year. So far, they’ve honored their perpetual licenses and still offer them, but it seems like a perilous proposition given Canva’s audience and sales model.
Corel licensed their software for a while and released it as CorelXARA.
Cerilica (company name) Truism (product name).
There was also Composition, by a chap from New Zealand. Multiple transparent layers of any size and position, and and interesting system-wide plugin system.