Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 514,417 in 2013. It lies within the United Kingdom’s second most populous urban area, with a population of 2.55 million. Manchester is fringed by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east and an arc of towns with which it forms a continuous conurbation. The local authority is Manchester City Council.

The recorded history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort of Mamucium, a variant of which name (Mancunium) is preserved by the city’s demonym: residents are still referred to as Mancunians. The Roman fort was established in about 79 AD on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. It was historically a part of Lancashire, although areas of Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated during the 20th century. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a manorial township but began to expand «at an astonishing rate» around the turn of the 19th century. Manchester’s unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, and resulted in it becoming the world’s first industrialised city.

Manchester achieved city status in 1853, the first new British city for three hundred years. The Manchester Ship Canal, at the time the longest river navigation canal in the world, opened in 1894, creating the Port of Manchester and linking the city to sea, 36 miles (58 km) to the west. Its fortunes declined after the Second World War however, owing to deindustrialisation, but investment spurred by the 1996 Manchester bombing led to extensive regeneration.

Today Manchester is ranked as a beta world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network and is consequently the highest ranked British city except for London. Its metropolitan economy is the third largest in the United Kingdom with an estimated PPP GDP of US$92 billion as of 2014. Manchester is the third-most visited city in the UK by foreign visitors, after London and Edinburgh. It is notable for its architecture, culture, musical exports, media links, scientific and engineering output,social impact, sports clubs and transport connections. Manchester Liverpool Road railway station was the world’s first inter-city passenger railway station and it was in the city that scientists first split the atom and developed the stored-program computer.

History

The Brigantes were the major Celtic tribe in what is now Northern England; they had a stronghold in the locality at a sandstone outcrop on which Manchester Cathedral now stands, opposite the banks of the River Irwell. Their territory extended across the fertile lowland of what is now Salford and Stretford. Following the Roman conquest of Britain in the 1st century, General Agricola ordered the construction of a fort named Mamucium in the year 79 to ensure that Roman interests in Deva Victrix (Chester) and Eboracum (York) were protected from the Brigantes. Central Manchester has been permanently settled since this time. A stabilised fragment of foundations of the final version of the Roman fort is visible in Castlefield. The Roman habitation of Manchester probably ended around the 3rd century; its civilian settlement appears to have been abandoned by the mid-3rd century, although the fort may have supported a small garrison until the late 3rd or early 4th century. After the Roman withdrawal and Saxon conquest, the focus of settlement shifted to the confluence of the Irwell and Irk sometime before the arrival of the Normans after 1066. Much of the wider area was laid waste in the subsequent Harrying of the North.

Thomas de la Warre, lord of the manor, founded and constructed a collegiate church for the parish in 1421. The church is now Manchester Cathedral; the domestic premises of the college house Chetham’s School of Music and Chetham’s Library. The library, which opened in 1653 and is still open to the public today, is the oldest free public reference library in the United Kingdom.

Manchester is mentioned as having a market in 1282. Around the 14th century, Manchester received an influx of Flemish weavers, sometimes credited as the foundation of the region’s textile industry. Manchester became an important centre for the manufacture and trade of woollens and linen, and by about 1540, had expanded to become, in John Leland’s words, «The fairest, best builded, quickest, and most populous town of all Lancashire.» The cathedral and Chetham’s buildings are the only significant survivors of Leland’s Manchester.

During the English Civil War Manchester strongly favoured the Parliamentary interest. Although not long-lasting, Cromwell granted it the right to elect its own MP. Charles Worsley, who sat for the city for only a year, was later appointed Major General for Lancashire, Cheshire and Staffordshire during the Rule of the Major Generals. He was a diligent puritan, turning out ale houses and banning the celebration of Christmas; he died in 1656.

Significant quantities of cotton began to be used after about 1600, firstly in linen/cotton fustians, but by around 1750 pure cotton fabrics were being produced and cotton had overtaken wool in importance. The Irwell and Mersey were made navigable by 1736, opening a route from Manchester to the sea docks on the Mersey. The Bridgewater Canal, Britain’s first wholly artificial waterway, was opened in 1761, bringing coal from mines at Worsley to central Manchester. The canal was extended to the Mersey at Runcorn by 1776. The combination of competition and improved efficiency halved the cost of coal and halved the transport cost of raw cotton. Manchester became the dominant marketplace for textiles produced in the surrounding towns. A commodities exchange, opened in 1729, and numerous large warehouses, aided commerce. In 1780, Richard Arkwright began construction of Manchester’s first cotton mill. In the early 1800s, John Dalton formulated his atomic theory in Manchester.

Manchester’s history is concerned with textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. The great majority of cotton spinning took place in the towns of south Lancashire and north Cheshire, and Manchester was for a time the most productive centre of cotton processing, and later the world’s largest marketplace for cotton goods. Manchester was dubbed «Cottonopolis» and «Warehouse City» during the Victorian era. In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, the term «manchester» is still used for household linen: sheets, pillow cases, towels, etc.[ The industrial revolution brought about huge change in Manchester and was key to the increase in Manchester’s population.

Manchester began expanding «at an astonishing rate» around the turn of the 19th century as people flocked to the city for work from Scotland, Wales, Ireland and other areas of England as part of a process of unplanned urbanisation brought on by the Industrial Revolution. It developed a wide range of industries, so that by 1835 «Manchester was without challenge the first and greatest industrial city in the world.» Engineering firms initially made machines for the cotton trade, but diversified into general manufacture. Similarly, the chemical industry started by producing bleaches and dyes, but expanded into other areas. Commerce was supported by financial service industries such as banking and insurance.

Trade, and feeding the growing population, required a large transport and distribution infrastructure: the canal system was extended, and Manchester became one end of the world’s first intercity passenger railway—the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Competition between the various forms of transport kept costs down. In 1878 the GPO (the forerunner of British Telecom) provided its first telephones to a firm in Manchester.

The Manchester Ship Canal was built between 1888 and 1894, in some sections by canalisation of the Rivers Irwell and Mersey, running 36 miles (58 km) from Salford to Eastham Locks on the tidal Mersey. This enabled oceangoing ships to sail right into the Port of Manchester. On the canal’s banks, just outside the borough, the world’s first industrial estate was created at Trafford Park. Large quantities of machinery, including cotton processing plant, were exported around the world.

A centre of capitalism, Manchester was once the scene of bread and labour riots, as well as calls for greater political recognition by the city’s working and non-titled classes. One such gathering ended with the Peterloo Massacre of 16 August 1819. The economic school of Manchester capitalism developed there, and Manchester was the centre of the Anti-Corn Law League from 1838 onward.

Manchester has a notable place in the history of Marxism and left-wing politics; being the subject of Friedrich Engels’ work The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844; Engels spent much of his life in and around Manchester, and when Karl Marx visited Manchester, they met at Chetham’s Library. The economics books Marx was reading at the time can be seen in the library, as can the window seat where Marx and Engels would meet. The first Trades Union Congress was held in Manchester (at the Mechanics’ Institute, David Street), from 2 to 6 June 1868. Manchester was an important cradle of the Labour Party and the Suffragette Movement.

At that time, it seemed a place in which anything could happen—new industrial processes, new ways of thinking (the Manchester School, promoting free trade and laissez-faire), new classes or groups in society, new religious sects, and new forms of labour organisation. It attracted educated visitors from all parts of Britain and Europe. A saying capturing this sense of innovation survives today: «What Manchester does today, the rest of the world does tomorrow.» Manchester’s golden age was perhaps the last quarter of the 19th century. Many of the great public buildings (including Manchester Town Hall) date from then. The city’s cosmopolitan atmosphere contributed to a vibrant culture, which included the Hallé Orchestra. In 1889, when county councils were created in England, the municipal borough became a county borough with even greater autonomy.

Although the Industrial Revolution brought wealth to the city, it also brought poverty and squalor to a large part of the population. Historian Simon Schama noted that «Manchester was the very best and the very worst taken to terrifying extremes, a new kind of city in the world; the chimneys of industrial suburbs greeting you with columns of smoke». An American visitor taken to Manchester’s blackspots saw «wretched, defrauded, oppressed, crushed human nature, lying and bleeding fragments».

The number of cotton mills in Manchester itself reached a peak of 108 in 1853. Thereafter the number began to decline and Manchester was surpassed as the largest centre of cotton spinning by Bolton in the 1850s and Oldham in the 1860s. However, this period of decline coincided with the rise of city as the financial centre of the region. Manchester continued to process cotton, and in 1913, 65% of the world’s cotton was processed in the area. The First World War interrupted access to the export markets. Cotton processing in other parts of the world increased, often on machines produced in Manchester. Manchester suffered greatly from the Great Depression and the underlying structural changes that began to supplant the old industries, including textile manufacture.

Landmarks

Manchester’s buildings display a variety of architectural styles, ranging from Victorian to contemporary architecture. The widespread use ofred brick characterises the city, much of the architecture of which harks back to its days as a global centre for the cotton trade. Just outside the immediate city centre is a large number of former cotton mills, some of which have been left virtually untouched since their closure while many have been redeveloped into apartment buildings and office space. Manchester Town Hall, in Albert Square, was built in the Gothic revival style and is considered to be one of the most important Victorian buildings in England.

Manchester also has a number of skyscrapers built during the 1960s and 1970s, the tallest of which was the CIS Tower located nearManchester Victoria station until the Beetham Tower was completed in 2006; it is an example of the new surge in high-rise building and includes a Hilton hotel, a restaurant, and apartments. On its completion, it was the tallest building in the UK outside London. The Green Building, opposite Oxford Road station, is a pioneering eco-friendly housing project, while the recently completed One Angel Square, is one of the most sustainable large buildings in the world. The award-winning Heaton Park in the north of the city borough is one of the largest municipal parks in Europe, covering 610 acres (250 ha) of parkland. The city has 135 parks, gardens, and open spaces.

Two large squares hold many of Manchester’s public monuments. Albert Square has monuments to Prince Albert, Bishop James Fraser,Oliver Heywood, William Ewart Gladstone,and John Bright. Piccadilly Gardens has monuments dedicated to Queen Victoria, Robert Peel, James Watt and the Duke of Wellington. The cenotaph in St Peter’s Square, by Edwin Lutyens, is Manchester’s main memorial to its war dead. The Alan Turing Memorial in Sackville Park commemorates his role as the father of modern computing. A larger-than-life statue of Abraham Lincoln by George Gray Barnard in the eponymous Lincoln Square (having stood for many years in Platt Fields) was presented to the city by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Phelps Taft of Cincinnati, Ohio, to mark the part that Lancashire played in the cotton famine and American Civil War of 1861–1865. A Concorde is on display near Manchester Airport.

Manchester has six designated Local Nature Reserves which are Chorlton Water Park, Blackley Forest, Clayton Vale and Chorlton Ees, Ivy Green, Boggart Hole Clough andHighfield Country Park.

Culture, music and sports

Bands that have emerged from the Manchester music scene include The Smiths, Buzzcocks, The Fall, Joy Division and its successor group New Order, Oasis, Elbow, Doves, The Charlatans, The Outfield and Take That. Manchester was credited as the main regional driving force behind indie bands of the 1980s including Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, James, and The Stone Roses. These groups came from what became known as the «Madchester» scene that also centred on The Haçienda nightclub developed by founder of Factory Records Tony Wilson. Although from southern England, The Chemical Brothers subsequently formed in Manchester. Ex-Smiths Morrissey continues a successful solo career. Notable Manchester acts of the 1960s include The Hollies, Herman’s Hermits, and Davy Jones of the Monkees (famed in the mid-1960s for not only their albums but also their American TV show) and the earlier Bee Gees, who grew up in Chorlton. Another notable contemporary band from Manchester are The Courteeners consisting of Liam Fray and four close friends.

Its main pop music venue is the Manchester Arena with over 21,000 seats, the largest arena of its type in Europe which was votedInternational Venue of the Year in 2007. In terms of concert goers, it is the busiest indoor arena in the world ahead of Madison Square Garden in New York and The O2 Arena in London, the second and third busiest respectively. Other major venues include the Manchester Apollo, Albert Hall and the Manchester Academy. Smaller venues are the Band on the Wall, the Roadhouse, the Night and Day Café, the Ruby Lounge, and The Deaf Institute.

Manchester has two symphony orchestras, the Hallé and the BBC Philharmonic. There is also a chamber orchestra, the Manchester Camerata. In the 1950s, the city was home to the so-called «Manchester School» of classical composers, which comprised Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, David Ellis and Alexander Goehr. Manchester is a centre for musical education, with the Royal Northern College of Music, which celebrates its 40th Anniversary since its merger, and Chetham’s School of Music. Forerunners of the RNCM were the Northern School of Music (founded 1920) and the Royal Manchester College of Music (founded 1893), which were merged in 1973. One of the earliest instructors and classical music pianists/conductors at the RMCM, shortly after its founding was the famous Russian-born Arthur Friedheim, (1859–1932), who later had the music library at the famed Peabody Institute conservatory of music in Baltimore, Maryland, named for him. The main classical music venue was the Free Trade Hall on Peter Street, until the opening in 1996 of the 2,500 seat Bridgewater Hall.

Brass band music, a tradition in the north of England, is an important part of Manchester’s musical heritage; some of the UK’s leading bands, such as the CWS Manchester Band and the Fairey Band, are from Manchester and surrounding areas, and the Whit Friday brass band contest takes place annually in the neighbouring areas of Saddleworth and Tameside.

Manchester has a thriving theatre, opera and dance scene, and is home to a number of large performance venues, including the Manchester Opera House, which feature large-scale touring shows and West End productions; the Palace Theatre; and the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester’s former cotton exchange. The Royal Exchange is the largest theatre in the round space in the UK.

Smaller performance spaces include the Library Theatre, a producing theatre in the basement of the Central Library; the Contact Theatre; and Studio Salford. The Dancehouse is dedicated to dance productions. The Library Theatre closed in 2010, and will reopen in 2014 as HOME, a new custom built arts complex it will share with Cornerhouse
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Since 2007 the city has hosted the Manchester International Festival, a biennial international arts festival with a specific focus on original new work. In Chancellor George Osborne’s 2014 autumn statement he announced a £78 million grant to fund a new «large-scale, ultra-flexible arts space» for the city. The theatre, to be called The Factory, after Manchester’s Factory Records, will provide a permanent home for the Manchester International Festival.

Manchester is well known for being a city of sport. The city has two Premier League football clubs – Manchester United and Manchester City. Manchester United play at Old Trafford, in the neighbouring Greater Manchester borough of Trafford, the largest club football ground in the United Kingdom. Manchester has hosted every domestic, continental and international football competition at either Fallowfield Stadium, Maine Road, Old Trafford and the City of Manchester Stadium.

Competitions hosted in city include the FIFA World Cup (1966), UEFA European Football Championship (1996), Olympic Football (2012), UEFA Champions League Final (2003),UEFA Cup Final (2008), five FA Cup Finals (1893, 1911, 1915, 1970) and three League Cup Finals (1977, 1978, 1984).

Manchester City’s ground is the City of Manchester Stadium (also known as the Etihad Stadium for sponsorship purposes); its former ground, Maine Road was demolished in 2003. The City of Manchester Stadium was initially built as the main athletics stadium for the 2002 Commonwealth Games and was subsequently reconfigured into a football stadium before Manchester City’s arrival. First class sporting facilities were built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, including the City of Manchester Stadium, the National Squash Centre and the Manchester Aquatics Centre. Manchester has competed twice to host the Olympic Games, beaten by Atlanta for 1996 and Sydney for 2000. The National Cycling Centre includes a velodrome, BMX Arena and Mountainbike trials and is the home of British Cycling, UCI ProTeam Team Sky and Sky Track Cycling. The Manchester Velodrome was built as a part of the bid for the 2000 games and has become a catalyst for British success in cycling. The velodrome hosted the UCI Track Cycling World Championships for a record third time in 2008. The National Indoor BMX Arena (2,000 capacity) adjacent to the velodrome opened in 2011. The Manchester Arena hosted the FINA World Swimming Championships in 2008. Manchester Cricket Club evolved into Lancashire County Cricket Club and play at Old Trafford Cricket Ground. Manchester also hosted the World Squash Championships in 2008, and also hosted the 2010 World Lacrosse Championship in July 2010. Recent sporting events hosted by Manchester include the 2013 Ashes series and 2013 Rugby League World Cup. Future sporting events to be hosted in Manchester include the2015 Rugby World Cup.

Rowan Atkinson

Rowan Atkinson is an English actor, comedian, and screenwriter best known for his work on the sitcoms Blackadder and Mr. Bean. Atkinson first came to prominence in the sketch comedy show Not the Nine O’Clock News (1979–82), and via his participation in The Secret Policeman’s Balls from 1979. His other work includes the sitcom The Thin Blue Line (1995–1996).

He was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest actors in British comedy[4] and amongst the top 50 comedians ever, in a 2005 poll of fellow comedians.[5] He has also had cinematic success with his performances in the Mr. Beanmovie adaptations Bean and Mr. Bean’s Holiday and in Johnny English (2003) and its sequel Johnny English Reborn (2011).

Early life and education

Atkinson, the youngest of four brothers, was born in Consett, County Durham, England on 6 January 1955. His parents were Eric Atkinson, a farmer and company director, and Ella May (née Bainbridge), who married on 29 June 1945. His three older brothers are Paul, who died as an infant; Rodney, a Eurosceptic economist who narrowly lost the United Kingdom Independence Party leadership election in 2000; and Rupert. Atkinson was brought upAnglican, and was educated at Durham Choristers School a preparatory school, St. Bees School, and Newcastle University, where he received a degree in Electrical Engineering.

In 1975, he continued for the degree of MSc in Electrical Engineering at The Queen’s College, Oxford, the same college where his father matriculated in 1935, and which made Atkinson an Honorary Fellow in 2006. First winning national attention in the Oxford Revue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 1976, he had already written and performed early sketches for shows in Oxford by the Etceteras – the revue group of the Experimental Theatre Club(ETC) and for the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), meeting writer Richard Curtis and composer Howard Goodall, with whom he would continue to collaborate during his career.

Career

Atkinson starred in a series of comedy shows for BBC Radio 3 in 1978 called The Atkinson People. It consisted of a series of satirical interviews with fictional great men, who were played by Atkinson himself. The series was written by Atkinson and Richard Curtis, and produced by Griff Rhys Jones.

After university, Atkinson toured with Angus Deayton as his straight man in an act that was eventually filmed for a television show. After the success of the show, he did a one-off pilot for London Weekend Television in 1979 called Canned Laughter. Atkinson then went on to do Not the Nine O’Clock News for the BBC, produced by his friend John Lloyd. He featured in the show with Pamela Stephenson, Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith, and was one of the main sketch writers.

The success of Not the Nine O’Clock News led to him taking the lead role in the medieval sitcom The Black Adder (1983), which he also co-wrote with Richard Curtis. After a three-year gap, in part due to budgetary concerns, a second series was broadcast, this time written by Curtis and Ben Elton. Blackadder II (1986) followed the fortunes of one of the descendants of Atkinson’s original character, this time in the Elizabethan era. The same pattern was repeated in the two more sequelsBlackadder the Third (1987) (set in the Regency era), and Blackadder Goes Forth (1989) (set in World War I). TheBlackadder series became one of the most successful of all BBC situation comedies, spawning television specials includingBlackadder’s Christmas Carol (1988), Blackadder: The Cavalier Years (1988), and later Blackadder: Back & Forth (1999), which was set at the turn of the Millennium.

Atkinson’s other creation, the hapless Mr. Bean, first appeared on New Year’s Day in 1990 in a half-hour special for Thames Television. During this time, Atkinson appeared at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal in 1987 and 1989. Several sequels to Mr. Bean appeared on television until 1995, and the character later appeared in a feature film. Bean (1997) was directed by Mel Smith, Atkinson’s colleague in Not the Nine O’Clock News. A second film, Mr. Bean’s Holiday, was released in 2007. In 1995 and 1996, Atkinson portrayed Inspector Raymond Fowler in The Thin Blue Line television sitcom written by Ben Elton, which takes place in a police station located in fictitious Gasforth.

Atkinson has fronted campaigns for Kronenbourg, Fujifilm, and Give Blood. Atkinson appeared as a hapless and error-prone espionage agent named Richard Lathum in a long-running series of adverts for Barclaycard, on which character his title role in Johnny English and Johnny English Reborn was based. In 1999, he played the Doctor in The Curse of Fatal Death, a special Doctor Who serial produced for Comic Relief. Atkinson appeared as the Star in a Reasonably Priced Caron Top Gear in July 2011, driving the Kia Cee’d around the track in 1:42.2, placing him at the top of the leaderboard until Matt LeBlanc later recorded a 1:42.1 lap time.

Atkinson appeared at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony as Mr. Bean in a comedy sketch during a performance of «Chariots of Fire», playing a repeated single note on synthesiser. He then lapsed into a dream sequence in which he joined the runners from the film of the same name (about the 1924 Summer Olympics), beating them in their iconic run along West Sands at St. Andrews, by riding in a minicab and tripping the front runner.

In November 2012, it emerged that Rowan Atkinson intended to retire Mr. Bean. However, in January 2014, ITV announced a new animated series featuring Mr Bean with Rowan Atkinson returning to the role. It was expected to be released online as a web-series later in 2014, as a television broadcast followed shortly after. In October 2014, Atkinson also appeared as Mr Bean in a TV advert for Snickers. In 2015, he starred alongside Ben Miller and Rebecca Front in a sketch for BBC Red Nose Day in which Bean attends a funeral.

Atkinson’s film career began with a supporting part in the ‘unofficial’ James Bond movie Never Say Never Again (1983) and a leading role in Dead on Time (also 1983) with Nigel Hawthorne. He was in the 1988 Oscar-winning short film The Appointments of Dennis Jennings. He appeared in Mel Smith’s directorial debut The Tall Guy (1989) and appeared alongside Anjelica Huston and Mai Zetterling in Roald Dahl’s The Witches (1990). He played the part of Dexter Hayman in Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993), a parody of Rambo III, starring Charlie Sheen.

Atkinson gained further recognition with his turn as a verbally bumbling vicar in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and featured in Disney’s The Lion King (also 1994) as the voice of Zazu the red-billed hornbill. He also sang the song I Just Can’t Wait To Be King in The Lion King. Atkinson continued to appear in supporting roles in comedies, including Rat Race (2001), Scooby-Doo (2002), Love Actually (2003) and the crime comedy Keeping Mum (2005), which also starred Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith and Patrick Swayze.

In addition to his supporting roles, Atkinson has also had success as a leading man. His television character Mr. Bean debuted on the big screen with Bean (1997) to international success. A sequel, Mr. Bean’s Holiday (2007) also became an international success. He has also starred in the James Bond parody Johnny English(2003) and its sequel, Johnny English Reborn (2011).

Personal life

Rowan Atkinson was formerly in a relationship with actress Leslie Ash.[37] He married Sunetra Sastry in February 1990. The couple first met in the late 1980s, when she was working as a makeup artist with the BBC. They have two children, daughter Lily (an actress), and son Benjamin. In February 2014, it was announced that Atkinson had filed for divorce from Sastry, his wife of 24 years

In June 2005, Atkinson led a coalition of the United Kingdom’s most prominent actors and writers, including Nicholas Hytner, Stephen Fry, and Ian McEwan, to the British Parliament in an attempt to force a review of the controversial Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, which they felt would give overwhelming power to religious groups to impose censorship on the arts. In 2009, he criticised homophobic speech legislation, saying that the House of Lords must vote against a government attempt to remove a free speech clause in an anti-gay hate law.

In October 2012, he voiced his support for the Reform Section 5 campaign, which aims to reform or repeal Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, particularly its statement that an insult can be grounds for arrest and punishment. It is a reaction to several recent high-profile arrests, which Atkinson sees as a restriction of freedom of expression.

With an estimated wealth of approximately £85 million, Atkinson is able to indulge his passion for cars that began with driving his mother’s Morris Minoraround the family farm. He has written for the British magazines Car, Octane, Evo, and «SuperClassics», a short-lived UK magazine, in which he reviewed the McLaren F1 in 1995.

Atkinson holds a category C+E (formerly ‘Class 1’) lorry driving licence, gained in 1981, because lorries held a fascination for him, and to ensure employment as a young actor. He has also used this skill when filming comedy material. In 1991, he starred in the self-penned The Driven Man, a series of sketches featuring Atkinson driving around London trying to solve his obsession with cars, and discussing it with taxi drivers, policemen, used-car salesmen and psychotherapists. A lover of and participant in car racing, he appeared as racing driver Henry Birkin in the television play Full Throttle in 1995.

Atkinson has raced in other cars, including a Renault 5 GT Turbo for two seasons for its one make series. From 1997 to 2015, he owned a rare McLaren F1, which was involved in an accident in Cabus, near Garstang, Lancashire with an Austin Metro in October 1999. It was damaged again in a serious crash in August 2011 when it caught fire after Atkinson reportedly lost control and hit a tree. That accident caused significant damage to the vehicle, taking over a year to be repaired and leading to the largest insurance payout in Britain, at £910,000. He has previously owned a Honda NSX. Other cars he owns include an Audi A8, a Škoda Superb, and a Honda Civic Hybrid.

In July 2011, Atkinson appeared as the «Star in a Reasonably Priced Car» on Top Gear, driving the Kia Cee’d around the track in 1:42.2, granting him first place on the leader boar.

Leicester

Leicester is a city and unitary authority area in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest. It is the burial place of King Richard III.

In the 2011 census the population of the Leicester unitary authority was 330,000, making it the largest unitary authority in the East Midlands region and the tenth largest city in the United Kingdom.

Ancient Roman pavements and baths remain in Leicester from its early settlement as Ratae, a Roman military outpost in a region inhabited by the Celtic Corieltauvi tribe. Following the Roman withdrawal from Britain, the early medieval Ratae is shrouded in obscurity, but when the settlement was captured by the Danes it became one of five fortified towns important to the Danelaw and it appeared in the Domesday Book as «Ledecestre». Leicester continued to grow throughout the Early Modern period as a market town, although it was the Industrial Revolution that facilitated a process of rapid unplanned urbanisation in the area.

A newly constructed rail and canal network routed through the area stimulated industrial growth in the 19th century, and Leicester became a major economic centre with a variety of manufacturers engaged in engineering, shoemaking and hosiery production. The economic success of these industries, and businesses ancillary to them, resulted in significant urban expansion into the surrounding countryside. Leicester is one of the oldest cities in England, it was the centre of the bishopric from around 670, endowing it with city status. However, it lost city status in the 11th century during a time of struggle between the church and the aristocracy. The boundaries of Leicester were extended several times in the 19th and 20th centuries; it became a county borough in 1889, and was re-granted city status in 1919.

Today, Leicester is located at the intersection of the north/south Midland Main Line and east/west Birmingham/Leicester/Cambridge CrossCountry railway lines and at the confluence of the M1/M69 motorways and the A46/A6 trunk routes. The city and metropolitan area is culturally diverse, with well established South Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities, in addition to more recent influxes from European Community countries, amongst others. Leicester is a major centre of learning: the University of Leicester is famous for the quality of its teaching and research; De Montfort University is very well regarded in many of its specialist fields. On 20 June 2013, Leicester was announced as one of four shortlisted cities for the second UK City of Culture award.

History

Leicester is one of the oldest cities in England, with a history going back at least two millennia. The native Iron Age settlement encountered by the Romans at the site seems to have developed in the 2nd or 1st centuries bc. Little is known about this settlement or the condition of the River Soar at this time, although roundhouses from this era have been excavated and seem to have clustered along roughly 8 hectares (20 acres) of the east bank of the Soar above its confluence with the Trent. This area of the Soar was split into two channels: a main stream to the east and a narrower channel on the west, with a presumably marshy island between. The settlement seems to have controlled a ford across the larger channel. The later Roman name was a latinate form of the Brittonic word for «ramparts», suggesting the site was an oppidum. The plural form of the name suggests it was initially composed of several villages. The Celtic tribe holding the area was later recorded as the «Coritanians» but an inscription recovered in 1983 showed this to have been a corruption of the original «Corieltauvians». The Corieltauvians are believed to have ruled over roughly the area of the East Midlands.

It is believed that the Romans arrived in the Leicester area around ad 47, during their conquest of southern Britain. The Corieltauvian settlement lay near a bridge on the Fosse Way, a Roman road between the legionary camps at Isca (Exeter) and Lindum (Lincoln). It remains unclear whether the Romans fortified and garrisoned the location, but it slowly developed from around the year 50 onwards as the tribal capital of the Corieltauvians under the name Ratae Corieltauvorum. In the 2nd century, it received a forum and bathhouse. In 2013, the discovery of a Roman cemetery found just outside the old city walls and dating back to ad 300 was announced. The remains of the baths of Roman Leicester can be seen at the Jewry Wall; recovered artifacts are displayed at the adjacent museum.

Medieval

Knowledge of the town following the Roman withdrawal from Britain is limited. Certainly there is some continuation of occupation of the town, though on a much reduced scale in the 5th and 6th centuries. Its memory was preserved as the Cair Lerion of the History of the Britons. Following the Saxon invasion of Britain, Leicester was occupied by theMiddle Angles and subsequently administered by the kingdom of Mercia. It was elevated to a bishopric in either 679 or 680; this see survived until the 9th century, when Leicester was captured by Danish Vikings. Their settlement became one of the Five Burghs of the Danelaw, although this position was short-lived. The Saxon bishop, meanwhile, fled toDorchester-on-Thames and Leicester did not become a bishopric again until the Church of St Martin became Leicester Cathedral in 1927. The settlement was recorded under the name Ligeraceaster in the early 10th century.

Following the Norman conquest, Leicester was recorded by William’s Domesday Book as Ledecestre. It was noted as a city (civitas) but lost this status in the 11th century owing to power struggles between the Church and the aristocracy and did not become a legal city again until 1919.

Geoffrey of Monmouth composed his History of the Kings of Britain around the year 1136, naming a King Leir as an eponymous founder figure. According to Geoffrey’s narrative, Cordelia had buried her father beneath the river in a chamber dedicated to Janus and that his feast day was an annual celebration.

At the end of the War of the Roses, King Richard III was buried in Leicester’s Greyfriars Church, whose ruins are now located beneath a car park. There was a legend that his corpse had been cast into the river, while some historians argued that his tomb and remains were destroyed during the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. However, in September 2012, an archaeological investigation discovered a skeleton which was subsequently verified to be related to two descendants of Richard III’s sister. In 2015 Richard III was reburied in pride of place near the high altar in Leicester Cathedral.

On 4 November 1530, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was arrested on charges of treason and taken from York Place. On his way south to face dubious justice at the Tower of London, he fell ill. The group escorting him was concerned enough to stop at Leicester. There, Wolsey’s condition quickly worsened. He died on 29 November 1530 and was buried at Leicester Abbey, now Abbey Park.

Lady Jane Grey, a great-granddaughter of Henry VII who reigned as England’s uncrowned Queen Regnant for nine days in June of 1553, was born at Bradgate Park near Leicester around 1536.

Queen Elizabeth I’s intimate and former suitor, Robert Dudley, was given the Earldom of Leicester.

Stuart

The Corporation of Leicester opposed the efforts of Charles I of England to disafforest the nearby Leicester Forest, believing it to be likely to throw many of its residents into poverty and need of relief. Sir Miles Fleetwood was sent to commission the disafforestation and division of lands being used in common. Riots destroyed enclosures in spring 1627 and 1628, following a pattern of anti-enclosure disturbances found elsewhere including the Western Rising.

Petitions challenging the enclosures were presented by the Corporation of Leicester and borough residents to the King and Privy Council. They were unsuccessful so petitioned the House of Lords in June 1628 who however supported Fleetwood but asked for proceedings made by the Crown against the rioters to be dropped. Compensation made to the legal residents of the forest was reasonably generous by comparison with other forests. The Corporation received 40 acres for relief of the poor.

Civil War

Leicester was a Roundhead stronghold during the English Civil War. In 1645, Prince Rupert decided to attack the city to draw the New Model Army away from the Royalist headquarters of Oxford. Royalist guns were set up on Raw Dykes and, after an unsatisfactory response to a demand for surrender, the Newarke was stormed and the city was sacked on 30 May. Hundreds of people were killed by Rupert’s cavalry and reports of the severity of the sacking were further exaggerated by the Parliamentary press in London.

Industrial Era

The construction of the Grand Union Canal in the 1790s linked Leicester to London and Birmingham; by 1832, the railway had arrived in Leicester. TheLeicester and Swannington provided a supply of coal to the town from nearby collieries and the Midland Counties linked the town to the national network by 1840. A direct link to London’s St Pancras Station was established by the Midland Main Line in the 1860s. These developments encouraged and accompanied a process of industrialisation which intensified throughout the reign of Queen Victoria. Factories began to appear, particularly along the canal and river, and districts such as Frog Island and Woodgate were the locations of numerous large mills. Between 1861 and 1901, Leicester’s population increased from 68 000 to 212 000 and the proportion employed in trade, commerce, building, and the city’s new factories and workshops rose steadily. Hosiery, textiles, and footwear became the major industrial employers: manufacturers such as N. Corah & Sons and the Cooperative Boot and Shoe Company were opening some of the largest manufacturing premises in Europe. They were joined, in the latter part of the century, by engineering firms such as Kent Street’s Taylor & Hubbard (crane makers & founders, Vulcan Road’s William Gimson & Company (steam boilers & founders), and Martin Street’s Richards & Company (steel works & founders).

The politics of Victorian Leicester were lively and very often bitter. Years of consistent economic growth meant that living standards generally increased, but Leicester was a stronghold of Radicalism. Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, kept a shop in Church Gate. There were serious Chartist riots in the town in 1842 and again six years later. The Leicester Secular Society was founded in 1851 but secularist speakers such as George Holyoake were often denied the use of speaking halls. It was not until 1881 that Leicester Secular Hall was opened. The second half of the 19th century also witnessed the creation of many other institutions, including the town council, the Royal Infirmary, and the Leicester Constabulary. It also benefited from general acceptance that municipal organisations had a responsibility to provide for the town’s water supply, drainage, and sanitation.

Leicester became a county borough in 1889, although it was abolished with the rest in 1974 as part of the Local Government Act. The city regained its unitary status apart from Leicestershire in 1997. The borough had been expanding throughout the 19th century, but grew most notably when it annexed Belgrave, Aylestone, North Evington, Knighton, and Stoneygate in 1892.

In 1900, the Great Central Railway provided another link to London, but the rapid population growth of the previous decades had already begun to slow by the time of Queen Victoria’s death in 1901. World War I and the subsequent epidemics had further impacts. Nonetheless, Leicester was finally recognised as a legal city once more in 1919 and, in 1925, again became a cathedral city on the consecration of St Martin’s. A second major extension to the boundaries following the changes in 1892 took place in 1935, with the annexation of the remainder of Evington, Humberstone, Beaumont Leys, and part of Braunstone. A third major revision of the boundaries took place in 1966, with the net addition to the city of just over 450 acres (182 ha). The boundary has remained unchanged since that time.

Leicester’s diversified economic base and lack of dependence on primary industries meant that it was much better placed than many other cities to weather the tariff wars of the 1920s and Great Depression of the 1930s. The Bureau of Statistics of the newly formedLeague of Nations identified Leicester in 1936 as the 2nd-richest city in Europe and it became an attractive destination for refugees fleeing persecution and political turmoil in continental Europe. Firms such as Corah and Liberty Shoes used their reputation for producing high-quality products to expand their businesses. These years witnessed the growth in the city of trade unionism and particularly the co-operative movement. The Co-op became an important employer and landowner; when Leicester played host to the Jarrow March on its way to London in 1936, the Co-op provided the marchers with a change of boots. In 1938, Leicester was selected as the base for Squadron 1F, the first A.D.C.C (Air Defence Cadet Corp), the predecessor of the Air Training Corps.

The years after World War II, particularly from the 1960s onwards, brought many social and economic challenges.

Mass housebuilding continued across Leicester for some 30 years after 1945. Existing housing estates such as Braunstone were expanded, while several completely new estates – of both private and council tenure – were built. The last major development of this era was Beaumont Leys in the north of the city, which was developed in the 1970s as a mix of private and council housing. There was a steady decline in Leicester’s traditional manufacturing industries and, in the city centre, working factories and light industrial premises have now been almost entirely replaced. Many former factories, including some on Frog Island and at Donisthorpe Mill, have been badly damaged by fire. Rail and barge were finally eclipsed by automotive transport in the 1960s and ’70s: the Great Central and the Leicester & Swannington both closed and the northward extension of the M1 motorway linked Leicester into England’s growing motorway network. With the loss of much of the city’s industry during the 1970s and ’80s, some of the old industrial jobs were replaced by new jobs in the service sector, particularly in retail. The opening of the Haymarket Shopping Centre in 1971 was followed by a number of new shopping centres in the city, including St Martin’s Shopping Centre in 1984 and the Shire Shopping Centre in 1992. The Shires was subsequently expanded in September 2008 and rebranded as Highcross. By the 1990s, as well, Leicester’s central position and good transport links had established it as a distribution centre; the southwestern area of the city has also attracted new service and manufacturing businesses.

Landmarks

There are ten Scheduled Monuments in Leicester and thirteen Grade I listed buildings: some sites, such as Leicester Castle and the Jewry Wall, appear on both lists.

20th-century architecture: Leicester University Engineering Building (James Stirling & James Gowan : Grd II Listed), Kingstone Department Store, Belgrave Gate (Raymond McGrath : Grd II Listed), National Space Centre tower.
Older architecture:

Tourist: Discover Leicester Tour is an open top tour bus linking many of the Leicestershire tourist sites in and around the city.

Parks: Abbey Park, Botanic Gardens, Castle Gardens, Gorse Hill City Farm, Grand Union Canal, Knighton Park, Nelson Mandela Park, River Soar, Victoria Park, Watermead Country Park.

Industry: Abbey Pumping Station, National Space Centre, Great Central Railway.

Places of worship: Shree Jalaram Prarthana Mandal (Hindu temple), the Sake Centre of the LDS Church’s Leicester England Stake, Jain Centre, Leicester Cathedral, Leicester Central Mosque, Masjid Umar (Mosque), Guru Nanak Gurdwara (Sikh), Neve Shalom Synagogue (Progressive Jewish).

Historic buildings: Town Hall, Guildhall, Belgrave Hall, Jewry Wall, Secular Hall, Abbey, Castle, St Mary de Castro, The City Rooms, Newarke Magazine Gateway.
Shopping: Haymarket Shopping Centre, Highcross, Market, Golden Mile, Beaumont Shopping Centre, Fosse Shopping Park, St Martin’s Square, Silver Arcade.

Sport: King Power Stadium – Leicester City FC, Welford Road – Leicester Tigers, Grace Road – Leicestershire County Cricket Club, Beaumont Sports Complex – Leicester Lions Speedway, John Sanford Sports Centre – Leicester Riders, Saffron Lane sports centre – Leicester Coritanian Athletics Club.

Culture

The city hosts an annual Pride Parade (Leicester Pride), a Caribbean Carnival (the largest in the UK outside London), the largest Diwali celebrations outside of India and the largest comedy festival in the UK Leicester Comedy Festival. One of the best known places in the city is Melton Road, near the city centre, which contains many diverse retail stores and restaurants for both locals and tourists. From clothing to fine cuisines, specialist bridal/groom makeup and home appliances, this road promotes and holds many authentic cultures globally. Melton Road is regarded as the pin point of Leicester as a multifaith city. For many residents of Leicester, Melton Road is a place with strong links to their roots and origins. From an ethnic point of view, this is just one of the many sites within the city that enables every person to feel a sense of homeliness and strong pride of culture.

The Leicester International Short Film Festival is an annual event; it began life with humble beginnings in 1996 under the banner title of «Seconds Out». It has become one of the most important short film festivals in the UK It usually runs in early November, with venues including the Phoenix Arts Centre.

Leicester

Clive Owen

Clive Owen (born 3 October 1964) is an English actor who first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for playing the lead role in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991. He then received critical acclaim for his work in the film Close My Eyes (1991) before getting international notice for his performance as a struggling writer in Croupier (1998). In 2005, he won a Golden Globe and aBAFTA Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his appearance in the drama Closer (2004).

Owen has since played leading roles in films such as Sin City (2005), Derailed (2005), Inside Man (2006), Children of Men (2006), and The International (2009). In 2012, he earned his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his role in Hemingway & Gellhorn.

Early Life

The fourth of five brothers, Owen was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, in the English Midlands, a son of Pamela (née Cotton) and Jess Owen, a country and western singer. His father left the family when Owen was three years old, and despite a brief reconciliation when Owen was nineteen, the two have remained estranged. Raised by his mother and stepfather, a railway ticket clerk, he has described his childhood as «rough». While initially opposed to drama school, he changed his mind in 1984, after a long and fruitless period of searching for work. Owen graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After graduation, he won a position at the Young Vic, performing in several Shakespearean plays.

Career

Initially, Owen carved out a career in television. In 1988, he starred as Gideon Sarn in a BBC production of Precious Bane and the Channel 4 film Vroom before the 1990s saw him become a regular on stage and television in the UK, notably his lead role in the ITV series Chancer, followed by an appearance in the Thames Television production of Lorna Doone.

He won critical acclaim for his performancees in the Stephen Poliakoff film Close My Eyes (1991) – in which he has a full frontal nude scene – about a brother and sister who embark on an incestuous love affair. He subsequently appeared in The Magician, Class of ’61, Century, Nobody’s Children, An Evening with Gary Lineker, Doomsday Gun, Return of the Native and then a Carlton production called Sharman, about a private detective. In 1996, he appeared in his first major Hollywood film The Rich Man’s Wife alongside Halle Berry before finding international acclaim in a Channel 4 film directed by Mike Hodges called Croupier (1998). In Croupier, he played the title role of a struggling writer who takes a job in a London casino as inspiration for his work, only to get caught up in a robbery scheme. In 1999, he appeared as an accident-prone driver in Split Second, his first BBC production in about a decade.
Owen starred in The Echo, a BBC1 drama, before starring in the film Greenfingers, about a criminal who goes to work in a garden. He then appeared in the BBC1 mystery seriesSecond Sight. In 2001, he provided the voice-over for a BBC2 documentary about popular music called Walk On By, as well as starring in a highly acclaimed theatre production called A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, about a couple with a severely handicapped daughter.

Owen became well known to North American audiences in the summer of 2001 after starring as «The Driver» in The Hire, a series of short films sponsored by BMW and made by prominent directors. He then appeared in Robert Altman’s Gosford Park among an all-star cast which included Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Kristin Scott Thomas and Ryan Phillippe. He appeared in the 2002 hit The Bourne Identity. In 2003, he reteamed with director Mike Hodges in I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. He starred in Beyond Borders and won the title role in King Arthur, for which he learned to ride a horse.

He appeared in the West End and Broadway hit play Closer, by Patrick Marber, which was produced as a film in 2004. He played Dan in the play, but was Larry the dermatologist in the film version. His portrayal of Larry in the film received rave reviews, as well as the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards, and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He noted that the expectations of him since the Oscar nomination have not changed the way he approaches film-making.

After Closer, he appeared in Derailed alongside Jennifer Aniston, the comic book thriller Sin City as the noir antihero Dwight McCarthy and as a mysterious bank robber in Inside Man.

In 2006, Owen spoofed the Bond connection by making an appearance in the remake of The Pink Panther in which he plays a character named «Nigel Boswell, Agent 006» (when he introduces himself to Inspector Clouseau, he quips that Owen’s character is «one short of the big time»).

In 2006, Owen starred in the highly acclaimed Children of Men, for which he received widespread praise. The film was nominated for various awards, including an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; Owen worked on the screenplay, although he was uncredited. The next year he starred alongside Paul Giamatti in the film Shoot ‘Em Up and appeared as Sir Walter Raleigh opposite Cate Blanchett’s Elizabeth I of England in the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age. He appeared in the Christmas special of the Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant show Extras, as revealed in the video podcast teaser. Owen starred in The International (2009), a film which he described as a «paranoid political thriller». He then played the lead in The Boys Are Back, an Australian adaptation of the book The Boys Are Back in Town by Simon Carr.
In June 2010 it was announced that Owen and Nicole Kidman would star in an HBO film about Ernest Hemingway and his relationship with Martha Gellhorn entitled Hemingway & Gellhorn. James Gandolfini served as executive producer to the film, written by Barbara Turner and Jerry Stahl. The film was directed by Philip Kaufman. The film was released in 2012. Owen shot Shadow Dancer, joint Anglo-Irish production about a young mother who is heavily involved with the Irish Republican Movement. She is arrested in London following an aborted bombing attempt and must either choose to inform on her family or spend the rest of her life behind bars. The film co-stars Andrea Riseborough, Gillian Anderson andAidan Gillen and was directed by James Marsh. In April 2010, he was cast as the lead in Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s horror-thriller Intruders. The film received a limited release in the US in 2011.

Owen starred in the film Blood Ties, directed by Guillaume Canet, alongside French actress Marion Cotillard. It was released in June 2013 at the2013 Cannes Film Festival.
In 2015, Owen will make his Broadway debut in a revival of Harold Pinter’s Old Times.

Personal life

Owen married Sarah-Jane Fenton on 6 March 1995; the couple live in Highgate, London and Wrabness, Essex with their two daughters, Hannah (1997) and Eve (1999).

In November 2006, Owen became patron of the Electric Palace Cinema in Harwich, Essex, and launched an appeal for funds to repair deteriorating elements of the fabric.

Owen enjoys the music of indie rock band Hard-Fi and has been seen at two of their concerts: at Brixton Academy on 15 May 2006 and Wembley Arena on 18 December 2007. He is also a supporter of Liverpool FC and narrated the fly on the wall documentary series Being: Liverpool.

Coventry

Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the centre of England. It was the capital of England more than once in the 15th century when the seat of Government was held in Coventry. Coventry’s heritage includes the Roman Fort at Baginton, Lady Godiva, St Mary’s Guildhall (where kings and queens were entertained) and three cathedrals.

Coventry is located in the county of West Midlands but is historically part of Warwickshire. Coventry is the 10th largest city in England and the 13th largest UK city overall. It is also the second largest city in the West Midlands region, after Birmingham, with a population of 337,400 in 2014.

Coventry is situated 95 miles (153 km) northwest of central London, 19 miles (31 km) east-south-east of Birmingham, 24 miles (39 km) southwest of Leicester and 11 miles (18 km) north of Warwick. Although harbouring a population of more than a third-of-a-million inhabitants, Coventry is not amongst the English Core Cities Group due to its proximity to Birmingham. Approximately half a million people live within 10 miles (16 km) of Coventry city centre.

Coventry was the world’s first twin city, when it formed a twinning relationship with the Russian city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) during the Second World War. The relationship developed through ordinary people in Coventry who wanted to show their support for the Soviet Red Army during the Battle of Stalingrad.

Coventry Cathedral is one of the newer cathedral buildings, having been built after the destruction of the 14th century cathedral church of Saint Michael by the German Luftwaffe on 14 November 1940. Coventry motor companies have contributed significantly to the British motor industry. The city has two universities, the city centre-based Coventry University and the University of Warwick on the southern outskirts.

History

Coventry is an ancient city that predates Birmingham and Leicester. It is likely that Coventry grew from a settlement of the Bronze Age near the present-day city centre where Coventry’s bowl-shaped topography and, at that time large flowing river and lakes, created the ideal settlement area, with mild weather and thick woods: food, water and shelter would have been easily found.

The Romans founded another settlement in Baginton and another formed around a Saxon nunnery, founded c. AD 700 by St Osburga, that was later left in ruins by King Canute’s invading Danish army in 1016. Leofric, Earl of Mercia and his wife Lady Godiva built on the remains of the nunnery and founded a Benedictine monastery in 1043 dedicated to St Mary. In time, a market was established at the abbey gates and the settlement expanded.

By the 14th century, Coventry was an important centre of the cloth trade, and throughout the Middle Ages was one of the largest and most important cities in England. The bishops of Lichfield were often referred to as bishops of Coventry and Lichfield, or Lichfield and Coventry (from 1102 to 1541). Coventry claimed the status of a city by ancient prescriptive usage, was granted a charter of incorporation in 1345, and in 1451 became a county in its own right.

Hostile attitudes of the cityfolk towards Royalist prisoners held in Coventry during the English Civil War are believed to have been the origin of the phrase «to be sent to Coventry», which in Britain means «to be ostracised»; although their physical needs were catered for, the Royalist prisoners were literally never spoken to by anybody.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Coventry became one of the three main British centres of watch and clock manufacture and ranked alongside Prescot, in Lancashire and Clerkenwell in London. As the industry declined, due mainly to competition from Swiss Made clock and watch manufacturers, the skilled pool of workers proved crucial to the setting up of bicycle manufacture and eventually the motorbike, car, machine tool and aircraft industries.

In the late 19th century, Coventry became a major centre of bicycle manufacture. The industry energised by the invention by James Starley and his nephew John Kemp Starley of the Rover safety bicycle, which was safer and more popular than the pioneering penny-farthing. The company became Rover. By the early 20th century, bicycle manufacture had evolved into motor manufacture, and Coventry became a major centre of the British motor industry. The design headquarters of Jaguar Cars is in the city at their Whitley plant and although vehicle assembly ceased at the Browns Lane plant in 2004, Jaguar’s head office returned to the city in 2011, and is also sited in Whitley. Jaguar is owned by the Indian company, Tata Motors.

Coventry became home to one of Britain’s first local ambulance services in 1902. The city’s first cinema opened in 1910. In 1914 motorbuses took to local roads.

With many of the city’s older properties becoming increasingly unfit for habitation, the first council houses were let to their tenants in 1917. With Coventry’s industrial base continuing to soar after the end of the Great War a year later, numerous private and council housing developments took place across the city in the 1920s and 1930s. The development of a southern by-pass around the city, starting in the 1930s and being completed in 1940, helped deliver more urban areas to the city on previously rural land.
Coventry suffered severe bomb damage during the Second World War, most notoriously from a massive Luftwaffe air raid known as the «Coventry Blitz» on 14 November 1940. Firebombing on this date led to severe damage to large areas of the city centre and to Coventry’s historic cathedral, leaving only a shell and the spire. More than 4,000 houses were damaged or destroyed, along with around three quarters of the city’s industrial plants. More than 800 people were killed, with thousands injured and homeless. The Germans coined the term «Coventrate» to describe the tactics of complete urban devastation developed for the raid. After the war, it was revealed that Churchill had prior knowledge of the attack due to the relative daily ease with which the Bletchley Park «enigma crackers» decoded all daily Luftwaffe traffic since May of that same year. However, he decided to let the attack proceed because to do otherwise would alert the Germans that Britain had broken their code.

Aside from London, Hull and Plymouth, Coventry suffered more damage than any other British city during the Luftwaffe attacks, with huge firestorms devastating most of the city centre. The city was probably targeted due to its high concentration of armaments, munitions, aircraft and aero-engine plants which contributed greatly to the British war effort, although there have been claims that Hitler launched the attack as revenge for the bombing of Munich by the RAF six days before the Coventry Blitz and chose the Midlands city because its medieval heart was regarded as one of the finest in Britain. Following the raids, the majority of Coventry’s historic buildings could not be saved as they were in ruinous states or were deemed unsafe for any future use. Several structures were demolished simply to make way for modern developments which saw the city centre’s buildings and road infrastructure altered almost beyond recognition by 1970.
Further housing developments in the private and public sector took place after the Second World War, partly to accommodate the growing population of the city and also to replace condemned and bomb damaged properties, including a major prefabricated housing district in south Canley which exists to this day.

In the post-war years Coventry was largely rebuilt under the general direction of the Gibson Plan, gaining a new pedestrianised shopping precinct (the first of its kind in Europe on such a scale) and in 1962 Sir Basil Spence’s much-celebrated new St Michael’s Cathedral (incorporating one of the world’s largest tapestries) was consecrated. Its prefabricated steel spire (flèche) was lowered into place by helicopter.

Major expansion to Coventry had taken place previously, in the 1920s and 1930s, to provide housing for the large influx of workers who came to work in the city’s booming factories. The areas which were expanded or created in this development included Radford, Coundon, Canley, Cheylesmore and Stoke Heath.

Coventry’s motor industry boomed during the 1950s and 1960s and Coventry enjoyed a ‘golden age’. During this period the disposable income of Coventrians was amongst the highest in the country and both the sports and the arts benefited. A new sports centre, with one of the few Olympic standard swimming pools in the UK, was constructed and Coventry City Football Club reached the First Division of English Football. The Belgrade Theatre was also constructed along with the Herbert Art Gallery. Coventry’s pedestrianised Precinct shopping area came into its own and was considered one of the finest retail experiences outside of London. In 1965 the new University of Warwick campus was opened to students, and rapidly became one of the country’s leading higher-education institutions.

Coventry’s large industrial base made it attractive to the wave of Asian and Caribbean immigrants who arrived from Commonwealth colonies after 1948. In 1960, one of Britain’s first mosques – and the very first in Coventry – was opened on Eagle Street to serve the city’s growing Islamic community. The 1970s, however, saw a decline in the British motor industry and Coventry suffered particularly badly, especially towards the end of that decade. By the early 1980s, Coventry had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and crime rates rose well above the national average. Some 30 years later, Coventry is now considered as one of the UK’s safer major cities and has gradually recovered economically with newer industries locating there, although the motor industry continues to decline. By 2008, only one motor manufacturing plant was operational, that of LTI Ltd, producing the popular TX4 taxi cabs. On 17 March 2010 LTI announced they would no longer be producing bodies and chassis in Coventry, instead producing them in China and shipping them in for final assembly in Coventry.

On the sporting scene, Coventry Rugby Football Club was consistently among the nation’s leading rugby football sides from the early 20th century, peaking in the 1970s and 1980s with a host of major honours and international players. Association football, on the other hand, was scarcely a claim to fame until 1967, when Coventry City F.C. finally won promotion to the top flight of English football as champions of the Football League Second Division. They would stay among the elite for the next 34 years, reaching their pinnacle with FA Cup glory in 1987 – the first and to date only major trophy in the club’s history. Their long stay in the top flight of English football ended in relegation in 2001, and in 2012 they were relegated again to the third tier of English football. Highfield Road, to the east of the city centre, was Coventry City’s home for 106 years from 1899. They finally departed from the stadium in 2005 on their relocation to the 32,600-seat Ricoh Arena some three miles to the north of the city centre, in the Rowleys Green district. Since the year 2000, the city has also been home to one of the most successful Ice Hockey teams in the country, the Coventry Blaze who are four time Elite League champions.

Places of interest

Cathedral

St. Michael’s Cathedral is Coventry’s best-known landmark and visitor attraction. The 14th century church was largely destroyed by German bombing during the Second World War, leaving only the outer walls and spire. At 303 feet (92 metres) high, the spire of St. Michael’s is claimed to be the third tallest cathedral spire in England, after Salisbury and Norwich. Due to the architectural design (in 1940 the tower had no internal wooden floors and a stone vault below the belfry) it survived the destruction of the rest of the cathedral. The new Coventry Cathedral was opened in 1962 next to the ruins of the old. It was designed by Sir Basil Spence. The cathedral contains the tapestry Christ in Glory by Graham Sutherland. The bronze statue St Michael’s Victory over the Devil by Jacob Epstein is mounted on the exterior of the new cathedral near the entrance. Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, regarded by some as his masterpiece, was written for the opening of the new cathedral. The cathedral was featured in the 2009 film Nativity!.

The spire of the ruined cathedral forms one of the «three spires» which have dominated the city skyline since the 14th century, the others being those of Christ Church (of which only the spire survives) and Holy Trinity Church (which is still in use).

Cultural institutions

The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum is one of the largest cultural institutions in Coventry. Another visitor attraction in the city centre is the free-to-enter Coventry Transport Museum, which has the largest collection of British-made road vehicles in the world. The most notable exhibits are the world speed record-breaking cars, Thrust2 and ThrustSSC. The museum received a refurbishment in 2004 which included the creation of a new entrance as part of the city’s Phoenix Initiative project. It was a finalist for the 2005 Gulbenkian Prize.

About four miles from the city centre and just outside Coventry in Baginton is the Lunt Fort, a reconstructed Roman fort on its original site. The Midland Air Museum is situated just within the perimeter of Coventry on land adjacent to Coventry Airport and near Baginton.

Coventry was one of the main centres of watchmaking during the 18th and 19th centuries and as the industry declined, the skilled workers were key to setting up the cycle trade. A group of local enthusiasts founded a museum in Spon Street.

Exhibits in Coventry Police Museum

The city’s main police station in Little Park Street also hosts a museum of Coventry’s police force. The museum, based underground, is split into two sections – one representing the history of the city’s police force, and the other compiling some of the more unusual, interesting and grisly cases from the force’s history. The museum is funded from charity donations – viewings can be made by appointment.

Coventry City Farm was a small farm in an urban setting. It was mainly to educate city children who might not get out to the countryside very often. The farm closed in 2008 due to funding problems.

Redevelopment

Major improvements continue to regenerate the city centre. The Phoenix Initiative, which was designed by MJP Architects, reached the final shortlist for the 2004 RIBA Stirling Prize and has now won a total of 16 separate awards. It was published in the book ‘Phoenix : Architecture/Art/Regeneration’ in 2004. Further major developments are potentially afoot, particularly the Swanswell Project, which is intended to deepen Swanswell Pool and link it to Coventry Canal Basin, coupled with the creation of an urban marina and a wide Parisian-style boulevard. A possible second phase of the Phoenix Initiative is also in the offing, although both of these plans are still on the drawing-board. On 16 December 2007, IKEA’s first city centre store in the UK was opened, in Coventry.

The River Sherbourne runs under Coventry’s city centre; the river was paved over during the rebuilding after the Second World War and is not commonly known. When the new rebuild of Coventry city centre takes place 2009 onwards, it is planned that river will be re-opened, and a river walk way will be placed alongside it in parts of the city centre. In April 2012, the pedestrianisation of Broadgate was completed.

Coventrians

History and Politics

Coventry is well known for the legendary 11th century exploits of Lady Godiva who rode through the city naked on horseback in protest at high taxes being levied on the cityfolk by her husband Leofric, Earl of Mercia. The residents of the city were commanded to look away as she rode, but one man did not and was allegedly struck blind. He became known as Peeping Tom thus originating a new idiom, or metonym, in English. There is a Grade II* listed statue of her in the city centre, which for 18 years had been underneath a Cathedral Lanes shopping centre canopy, removed in October 2008. There is also a bust of Peeping Tom looking out across Hertford Street shopping precinct, and overlooking Broadgate and the statue of Godiva is a clock where, at every hour, Lady Godiva appears on her horse while being watched by Peeping Tom.

The Labour politician Mo Mowlam was educated in Coventry; trade union organiser Tom Mann and National Socialist Movement leader Colin Jordan also came from the city. The statesman and founder of modern Australia, Sir Henry Parkes, was born in Canley in 1815.

Science, technology and business

Coventry has been the home to several pioneers in science and engineering. Samuel Courtauld and Co Ltd’s director H.G.Tetley chose Foleshill in Coventry in 1904 as the site of the world’s first man-made fibre factory which produced an «artificial silk» later known as viscose rayon. In 1987, also in Foleshill, Courtaulds Research produced the world’s first solvent-spun cellulose fibres Tencel.

Sir Frank Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine, was from the city, as was the inventor James Starley, instrumental in the development of the bicycle and his nephew J.K. Starley, who worked alongside his uncle and went on to found car company Rover. Cyborg scientist Kevin Warwick is also a Coventrian, as is Sir John Egan, industrialist and former Chief Executive of Jaguar Cars. Sir Frederick Gibberd. architect and designer, was born in Coventry, and amongst the buildings for which he is best known are Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral and Didcot Power Station. Donald Trelford, journalist and academic, was born in Coventry and attended Bablake School. He was editor of The Observer newspaper from 1975 to 1993. Born in Coventry, former King Henry VIII Grammar School pupil Paul Connew became editor of the Sunday Mirror and deputy editor of the Daily Mirror and News of The World – he is now Director of Communications at the children’s charity Sparks.

The arts

Dame Ellen Terry, one of the greatest Shakespearian actors, was born in Coventry in 1847. Other Coventrians in the arts include the poet Philip Larkin, actors Billie Whitelaw, Nigel Hawthorne, Brendan Price and Clive Owen, authors Graham Joyce, Lee Child and Mark Barrowcliffe, and playwrights Chris O’Connell and Alan Pollock and The Inbetweeners actress Tamla Kari.

Notable musicians originated in Coventry, including Frank Ifield, Vince Hill, Delia Derbyshire, Jerry Dammers, Terry Hall, Neville Staple, Hazel O’Connor, Clint Mansell, Julianne Regan, Lee Dorrian, Jen Ledger of Skillet, VJ Paul King, Taz (lead singer of the band Stereo Nation), and Panjabi MC. 2 Tone music developed in and around Coventry in the 1970s and two of the genre’s most notable bands, The Specials and The Selecter are both from the city. Other Coventry bands include Bolt Thrower, Coventry Automatics, The Primitives, Adorable, Fun Boy Three, The Colourfield, King, Jigsaw, The Sorrows, and The Enemy.

Record producer Pete Waterman is from the city and is president of Coventry Bears. Broadcaster Brian Matthew, theatre producer Dominic Madden, comedian and writer Emma Fryer and adult model Debee Ashby are Coventrians, as were comedian Reg Dixon and ventriloquist Dennis Spicer. Former Sky Sports broadcaster Richard Keys is a Coventrian, a product of Whitley Abbey School.

Sportsmen

Notable Coventrian sportsmen include speedway rider Tom Farndon; Davis Cup tennis player Tony Mottram; footballers Kenneth Hegan, Reg Matthews, Bobby Gould, Graham Alexander and Gary McSheffrey; cricketers Tom Cartwright and Ian Bell MBE; rugby union players Ivor Preece, Keith Fairbrother, David Duckham MBE, Neil Back, Danny Grewcock MBE, Geoff Evans, Andy Goode, Shane Geraghty and Tom Wood; motor-cyclist Cal Crutchlow; golfer Dame Laura Davies DBE; sprinter Marlon Devonish MBE; distance runners Brian Kilby and David Moorcroft OBE; darts player Steve Beaton.

Charlie Hunnam

Charlie Hunnam is is an English actor and screenwriter. He is known for his roles as Jackson «Jax» Teller in the FX drama series Sons of Anarchy (2008–14), Nathan Maloney in the Channel 4 drama Queer as Folk (1999–2000), Lloyd Haythe in the Fox comedy series Undeclared (2001–02), the title role in Nicholas Nickleby (2002), Pete Dunham in Green Street Hooligans (2005), and Raleigh Becket in Pacific Rim (2013).

Early Life

Hunnam was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England the son of William «Billy» Hunnam (1952–2013), a gangster and scrap metal merchant, and Jane Hunnam, a business owner. His maternal grandmother was the premier portrait artist in Newcastle. Hunnam was the second child born after brother William «Billy»; he later had two younger half-brothers, Oliver and Christian, on his mother’s side. His parents divorced when he was two years old and he moved to the village of Melmerby, Cumbria when he was twelve, as his mother remarried. He went to Heaton Manor School in Newcastle, and after moving he went to Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Penrith, Cumbria.Hunnam got expelled from secondary school and did his exams from home. He attended Cumbria College of Art and Design, where he graduated with a degree in the theory and history of film with a side in performing arts.

Profesional background

At the age of 17, Hunnam was discovered in a shoe shop on Christmas Eve while drunkenly clowning around buying shoes for his brother. A production manager for the Newcastle-based children’s show Byker Grove approached him and Hunnam was later cast in his first role as Jason in three episodes of the show. Aged 18, his first major role came when he was cast by Russell T Davies as fifteen-year-old schoolboy Nathan Maloney in Davies’ Channel 4 drama Queer as Folk.

He followed this up with his role as Daz in the film Whatever Happened to Harold Smith? (1999) and then moved to Los Angeles.

His career expanded to include a recurring role as Gregor Ryder in the WB series Young Americans. He then appeared in the short-lived Fox series Undeclared as an English drama student called Lloyd Haythe. Despite critical acclaim, the series was cancelled after one season.

Hunnam then appeared on the large screen in Abandon (2002), Nicholas Nickleby (2002), and Cold Mountain (2003) He decided to return to the UK to take the lead role of Pete Dunham in the film Green Street (2005), however his attempts at delivering a Cockney accent resulted in his inclusion in many critics’ «worst accents in movie history» lists.

Hunnam says his role Patric, a member of «The Fishes», in Children of Men (2006), was the final part in his «trilogy of mad men.

From 2008 to 2014, Hunnam starred as Jackson «Jax» Teller in Sons of Anarchy, a show about a prominent motorcycle club in a small fictional California town. Hunnam was cast after Kurt Sutter, the creator of the show, saw him in Green Street. His portrayal as Jax Teller has led Hunnam to receive a Critics’ Choice Television Award nomination, three EWwy Award nominations for Best Lead Actor in a Drama series, and a PAAFTJ Award nomination for Best Cast in a Drama Series.

In 2011, Hunnam played the role of Gavin Nichols in the philosophical drama/thriller The Ledge by Matthew Chapman.

In 2012, he starred as the title character in the indie comedy 3,2,1… Frankie Go Boom alongside, among others, his Sons of Anarchy co-star Ron Perlman. Hunnam said that he considered the day that he filmed scenes with Perlman for that film the best and funniest day of filming he’s ever had in his whole career. He also appeared as Jay, an ex-boxer, in Stefan Ruzowitzky’s crime drama Deadfall(2012).

Hunnam starred as Raleigh Becket in Guillermo del Toro’s sci-fi film Pacific Rim, that opened in July 2013 and grossed $411 million worldwide.

On 2 June 2014, Hunnam was awarded a Huading Award for Best Global Emerging Actor, for his role as Raleigh, due to the film doing very well in the Asian markets. Earlier in the same year, it was announced that Hunnam would reunite with del Toro in the horror film Crimson Peak. He will appear alongside Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain. The film was set to start shooting in February 2014 with an 16 October 2015 release date. On 3 October 2014, with an interview withEntertainment Weekly, Hunnam confirmed his involvement in both Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur and romantic-survival film, The Mountain Between Us. Hunnam also revealed that he was attached to an independent film A Prayer Before Dawn based off the book with the same name, with filming commencing in summer 2015.

The filming of Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur took place between March 2015 – July 2015. It is scheduled for a July 22, 2016 release. The production of The Lost City of Z took place August – October 2015 and is scheduled for a 2016 release. The film The Mountain Between Us will begin shooting at the end of 2015

Immediately prior to getting cast on Sons of Anarchy, he sold his screenplay Vlad to Summit Entertainment with Brad Pitt’s Plan B Studios co-producing. The film is being directed by music video director and photographer Anthony Mandler, and will focus on the real-life story of Vlad the Impaler. Hunnam learned the story from locals in Romania, while shooting Cold Mountain. He stated that he had not acted in 18 months and was so broke that if he had not managed to sell the script he would have had to sell his house and move back to Britain to live with his mother. Hunnam is also developing a screenplay based on a 2011 Rolling Stone article that he optioned about Edgar Valdez Villareal, an American drug lord who ran one of the biggest cartels in Mexico. Another project he has in development is a film about gypsy culture in Britain, which he hopes to direct.

Bradford

Bradford is in the Metropolitan Borough of the City of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England, in the foothills of thePennines 8.6 miles (14 km) west of Leeds, and 16 miles (26 km) northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897. Following local government reform in 1974, city status was bestowed upon thewider metropolitan borough.

Bradford forms part of the West Yorkshire Urban Area conurbation which in 2001 had a population of 1.5 million and is the fourth largest urban area in the United Kingdom with the Bradford subdivision of the aforementioned urban area having a population of 528,155.

Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Bradford rose to prominence during the 19th century as an international centre of textile manufacture, particularly wool. It was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution, and amongst the earliest industrialised settlements, rapidly becoming the «wool capital of the world». The area’s access to a supply of coal, iron ore and soft water facilitated the growth of Bradford’s manufacturing base, which, as textile manufacture grew, led to an explosion in population and was a stimulus to civic investment; Bradford has a large amount of listed Victorian architecture including the grand Italianate City Hall.

The textile sector in Bradford fell into decline from the mid-20th century. Since this time, Bradford has emerged as a tourist destination, becoming the first UNESCO City of Film with attractions such as the National Media Museum, Bradford City Park, theAlhambra theatre and Cartwright Hall. However, Bradford has faced similar challenges to the rest of the post-industrial area of Northern England, including deindustrialisation, social unrest and economic deprivation.

History

After an uprising in 1070, during William the Conqueror’s Harrying of the North, the manor of Bradford was laid waste and is described as such in the Domesday Book of 1086. It then became part of the Honour of Pontefract given to Ilbert de Lacy for service to the Conqueror, in whose family the manor remained until 1311. There is evidence of a castle in the time of the Lacys. The manor then passed to the Earl of Lincoln, John Gaunt, The Crown and, ultimately, private ownership in 1620.

By the middle ages Bradford, had become a small town centred on Kirkgate, Westgate and Ivegate. In 1316 there is mention of a fulling mill, a soke mill where all the manor corn was milled and a market. During the Wars of the Roses the inhabitants sided with House of Lancaster. Edward IV granted the right to hold two annual fairs and from this time the town began to prosper. In the reign of Henry VIII Bradford exceeded Leeds as a manufacturing centre. Bradford grew slowly over the next two-hundred years as the woollen trade gained in prominence.

During the Civil War the town was garrisoned for the Parliamentarians and in 1642 was unsuccessfully attacked by Royalist forces from Leeds. Sir Thomas Fairfax took the command of the garrison and marched to meet the Duke of Newcastle but was defeated. The Parliamentarians retreated to Bradford and the Royalists set up headquarters at Bolling Hall from where the town was besieged leading to its surrender. The Civil War caused a decline in industry but after the accession of William and Mary in 1689 prosperity began to return. The launch of manufacturing in the early 18th century marked the start of the town’s development while new canal and turnpike road links encouraged trade.

In 1801, Bradford was a rural market town of 6,393 people, where wool spinning and cloth weaving was carried out in local cottages and farms. Bradford was thus not much bigger than nearby Keighley (5,745) and was significantly smaller than Halifax (8,866) and Huddersfield (7,268). This small town acted as a hub for three nearby townships – Manningham, Bowling and Great and Little Horton, which were separated from the town by countryside.

Blast furnaces were established in about 1788 by Hird, Dawson Hardy at Low Moor and iron was worked by the Bowling Iron Company until about 1900. Yorkshire iron was used for shackles, hooks and piston rods for locomotives, colliery cages and other mining appliances where toughness was required. The Low Moor Company also made pig iron and the company employed 1,500 men in 1929. When the municipal borough of Bradford was created in 1847 there were 46 coal mines within its boundaries. Coal output continued to expand, reaching a peak in 1868 when Bradford contributed a quarter of all the coal and iron produced in Yorkshire.

In 1825 the wool-combers union called a strike that lasted five-months but workers were forced to return to work through hardship leading to the introduction of machine-combing. This Industrial Revolution led to rapid growth, with wool imported in vast quantities for the manufacture of worsted cloth in which Bradford specialised, and the town soon became known as the wool capital of the world.

Bradford had ample supplies of locally mined coal to provide the power that the industry needed. Local sandstone was an excellent resource for building the mills, and with a population of 182,000 by 1850, the town grew rapidly as workers were attracted by jobs in the textile mills. A desperate shortage of water in Bradford Dale was a serious limitation on industrial expansion and improvement in urban sanitary conditions. In 1854 Bradford Corporation bought the Bradford Water Company and embarked on a huge engineering program to bring supplies of soft water from Airedale and Wharfedale. By 1882 water supply had radically improved. Meanwhile, urban expansion took place along the routes out of the city towards the Hortons and Bowling and the townships had become part of a continuous urban area by the late 19th century.

A major employer was Titus Salt who in 1833 took over the running of his father’s woollen business specialising in fabrics combining alpaca, mohair, cotton and silk. By 1850 he had five mills. However, because of the polluted environment and squalid conditions for his workers Salt left Bradford and transferred his business to Salts Mill in Saltaire in 1850, where in 1853 he began to build the workers’ village which has become a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Henry Ripley was a younger contemporary of Titus Salt. He was managing partner of Edward Ripley & Son Ltd, which owned the Bowling Dye Works. In 1880 the dye works employed over 1000 people and was said to be the biggest dye works in Europe. Like Salt he was a councillor, JP and Bradford MP who was deeply concerned to improve working class housing conditions. He built the industrial Model village of Ripley Ville on a site in Broomfields, East Bowling close to the dye works.
Other major employers were Samuel Lister and his brother who were worsted spinners and manufacturers at Lister’s Mill (Manningham Mills). Lister epitomised Victorian enterprise but it has been suggested that his capitalist attitude made trade unions necessary. Unprecedented growth created problems with over 200 factory chimneys continually churning out black, sulphurous smoke, Bradford gained the reputation of being the most polluted town in England. There were frequent outbreaks of cholera and typhoid, and only 30% of children born to textile workers reached the age of fifteen. This extreme level of infant and youth mortality contributed to a life expectancy for Bradford residents of just over eighteen years, which was one of the lowest in the country.

Like many major cities Bradford has been a destination for immigrants. In the 1840s Bradford’s population was significantly increased by migrants from Ireland, particularly rural Mayo and Sligo, and by 1851 about 10% of the population were born in Ireland, the largest proportion in Yorkshire. Around the middle decades of the 19th century the Irish were concentrated in eight densely settled areas situated near the town centre. One of these was the Bedford Street area of Broomfields which in 1861 contained 1,162 persons of Irish birth—19% of all Irish born persons in the Borough

During the 1820s and 1830s, there was immigration from Germany. Many were Jewish merchants and they became active in the life of the town. The Jewish community mostly living in the Manningham area of the town, numbered about 100 families but was influential in the development of Bradford as a major exporter of woollen goods from their textile export houses predominately based in Little Germany and the civic life of Bradford. Charles Semon was a textile merchant and philanthropist who developed a productive textile export house in the town, he became the first foreign and Jewish mayor of Bradford in 1864. Jacob Behrens (1806–1889) was the first foreign textile merchant to export woollen goods from the town, his company developed into an international multi-million pound business. Behrens was a philanthropist, he also helped to establish the Bradford chamber of commerce in 1851. Jacob Moser was a textile merchant who was a partner in the firm Edelstein, Moser and Co, which developed into a successful Bradford textile export house. Moser was a philanthropist, he founded the Bradford Charity Organisation Society and the City Guild of Help. In 1910 Moser became the first Jewish Lord Mayor of Bradford.

To support the textile mills, a large manufacturing base grew up in the town providing textile machinery, and this led to diversification with different industries thriving side by side. The Jowett Motor Company founded in the early 20th century by Benjamin and William Jowett and Arthur V Lamb, manufactured cars and vans in Bradford for 50 years. The Scott Motorcycle Company was a well known producer of motorcycles and light engines for industry. Founded by Alfred Angas Scott in 1908 as the Scott Engineering Company in Bradford, Scott motorcycles were produced until 1978.

After the Second World War migrants came from Poland and Ukraine and since the 1950s from Bangladesh, India and particularlyPakistan.
The textile industry has been in decline throughout the latter part of the 20th century. A culture of innovation had been fundamental to Bradford’s dominance, with new textile technologies being invented in the city; a prime example being the work of Samuel Lister. This innovation culture continues today throughout Bradford’s economy, from automotive (Kahn Design) to electronics (Pace Micro Technology). Wm Morrison Supermarkets was founded by William Morrison in 1899, initially as an egg and butter merchant in Rawson Market, operating under the name of Wm Morrison (Provisions) Limited.

The grandest of the mills no longer used for textile production is Lister’s Mill, the chimney of which can be seen from most places in Bradford. It has become a beacon of regeneration after a £100 million conversion to apartment blocks by property developer Urban Splash
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In 1989, copies of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses were burnt in the city, and a section of the Muslim community led a campaign against the book. In July 2001, ethnic tensions led to rioting, and a report described Bradford as fragmented and a city of segregated ethnic communities

Landmarks

Bradford’s oldest building is the cathedral, which for most of its life was a parish church. Few other Medieval buildings have survived apart from Bolling Hall, which has been preserved as a museum.

There are some fine Victorian buildings: apart from the abundance of mills, there is the City Hall (with statues of rulers of England unusually including Oliver Cromwell), the former Wool Exchange, and a large Victorian cemetery at Undercliffe. Little Germany is a splendid Victorian commercial district just east of the city centre which takes its name from 19th century German Jewish immigrants who ran businesses from some of the many listed buildings. Following decades of decay there have been successful conversions to office and residential use. Paper Hall was saved from demolition and renovated in the 1990s and in mid-2005 renovation began on the prominent Eastbrook Hall in Little Germany. This was opened as luxury apartments by Prince Charles in Autumn 2008. Bradford also has a number of architecturally historic hotels that date back to the establishment of the two railway lines into the city centre, back in Victorian times. The Victoria Hotel and the Midland Hotel were built to accommodate business travellers to the city during the height of the woollen trade.

Like many cities, Bradford lost a number of notable buildings to developers in the 1960s and 1970s: particularly mourned at the time were the Swan Arcade and the old Kirkgate Market. In recent years some buildings from that era have themselves been demolished and replaced: Provincial House, next to Centenary Square, was demolished by controlled explosion in 2002, and Forster House was pulled down in 2005 as part of the Broadway development.

Bradford’s main art gallery is housed in the grand Edwardian Cartwright Hall in Lister Park. The National Media Museum celebrates cinema and movies, and is the most visited museum outside London. It contains an Imax cinema, the Cubby Broccoli Cinema, and the Pictureville Cinema — described by David Puttnam as the best cinema in Britain.

Also in the city is The St George’s Hall—a grand concert hall dating from 1853 making it the oldest concert hall in Britain and the third oldest in the whole of Europe. The former Odeon cinema (originally the New Victoria Theatre) was the recent focus of protests by Bradfordians who did not wish to see the old building close. Adjacent is the Alhambra theatre, built in 1914 for theatre impresario Frank Laidler, and later owned by the Moss Empire group (Oswald Stoll and Edward Moss). The theatre was refurbished in 1986.

Within the city district there are 37 parks and gardens. Lister Park, with its boating lake and Mughal Water Gardens, was voted Britain’s Best Park for 2006. Bowling Park in East Bowling is the site of the annual Bradford Carnival celebrating local African and Caribbean culture.

Bradford City Park, now home to the Bradford Festival which includes the Mela, is a six-acre public space in the heart of Bradford which contains the largest man-made water feature in any UK city—a 4,000sq m mirror pool featuring more than 100 fountains, including the tallest in any UK city at 30 m (100 ft). When the mirror pool is drained City Park is capable of holding events such as carnivals, markets, theatre productions, screenings and community festivals. Work started on the £24m project in February 2010 and City Park officially opened in March 2012, with thousands of people turning out for the grand opening event.

Bradford Odeon, formerly the Gaumont and New Victoria Theatre, was built in 1930 as a music venue and cinema with a capacity of over 3,000, and was the largest UK cinema outside London at the time. Standing in a conservation area next to the listed Alhambra Theatre, it closed in 2000 and was sold to developer Langtree to be demolished and replaced with an apartment and office block. The Odeon has been the subject of much controversy over its planned but so far failed demolition, with public support in the form of a 10,000 signature petition and ongoing campaigns for its renovation. In his successful by-election campaign for Bradford West in March 2012, George Galloway cited the restoration of the Odeon as his number one priority, asking Prime Minister David Cameron to intervene. Architectural historian Jonathan Foyle, actresses Imelda Staunton and Jenny Agutter, and director Michael Winner have all lent their support to the campaign.

Culture

The National Media Museum hosts the Bradford International Film Festival annually in March. In June 2009 Bradford was designated the world’s first UNESCO City of Film for its links to the production and distribution of films, its media and film museum and its «cinematographic legacy».

«Becoming the world’s first City of Film is the ultimate celebration of Bradford’s established and dynamic history in film and media,» said Colin Philpott, director of Bradford’s National Media Museum. «With the UNESCO City of Film designation, Bradford will now go on to achieve inspirational projects in film.» Simon Beaufoy from Bradford, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Slumdog Millionaire, said the city had played a crucial role in the story of cinema and deserved to be recognised.

The Bradford Animation Festival is the UK’s longest-running animation festival. Held each November, the festival hosts an array of screentalks, workshops and special events. The festival culminates in the annual BAF Awards which celebrate new animation from around the world.

The city has a rich heritage in film production and many films and TV productions have been filmed in the city including Room at the Top, Billy Liar and The Red Riding Trilogy. Bradford was the location for the films Yanks, starring Richard Gere, The Railway Children starring Jenny Agutter, a 1970s classic filmed around Haworth including the Bronte Parsonage about Victorian children whose father goes missing and FairyTale: A True Story starring Harvey Keitel based on the story of the Cottingley Fairies. Monty Python’s ground-breaking The Meaning of Life and the controversial hit Rita, Sue and Bob Too, about a married man who cannot choose between two teenage lovers, were also filmed in the city.

In recent years Bradford has developed a relationship with Bollywood, hosting the International Indian Film Festival awards in 2007.

There are four theatres in Bradford. The Alhambra also has a smaller studio theatre in the same complex. These are operated by City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council. The Theatre in the Mill is a small studio theatre at the University of Bradford, which presents student and community shows and small-scale touring professional work. The Bradford Playhouse is a privately run venue with a medium-sized proscenium theatre and a small studio.

Among the professional theatre companies based in Bradford are Kala Sangam, the satirical madcap comedy troop, Komedy Kollective, Lost Dog (based at Theatre In The Mill) and Mind the Gap, one of the longest established, who have always worked with a mixture of disabled and able-bodied performers. Groups and organisations teaching theatre include The Asian Theatre School, Bradford Stage and Theatre School and Stage 84. There are also a number of amateur theatre groups.
St George’s Hall is a concert hall dating from 1853 making it the oldest concert hall in Britain and the third oldest in Europe. Bradford Festival Choral Society was founded to perform at the inaugural Bradford Musical Festival that took place in August of that year, and the choir is still a part of the musical life of the city. The Hallé Orchestra have been regular visitors over the years, as have a wide range of popular musicians, bands, entertainers, comedians and theatrical productions.

Bradfordians

Only a few particularly notable names are listed here.
Among Bradford born people who made significant contributions to the arts were David Hockney, painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who was born in the city and educated at Bradford Grammar School. Frederick Delius (1862–1934) was a composer born to a family of German descent in the city and J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) was a novelist and playwright. Sir William Rothenstein was a painter, draughtsman and writer on art who was principal of the Royal College of Art from 1920–35. In the genre of classical music Rodney Friend is an English violinist, born (1940), In 1964 he became the youngest ever leader of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In the field of science and medicine, Friederich Wilhelm Eurich (1867–1945), professor of forensic medicine and bacteriologist, did much to conquer anthrax in the wool trade.

Sir Edward Appleton (1892–1965), discoverer of the ionosphere was a Nobel Prize winner. Professor Robert Turner (1923–1990) was a pathologist who came to Bradford from Belfast, and pioneered the use of chemotherapy in the treatment of cancer at the Bradford Royal Infirmary.

In the field of industry, Sir Jacob Behrens (1806–1889) was an Anglo–German textile merchant who was instrumental in Bradford becoming a major exporter of woollen goods.

In recent pop culture the former participant of The X Factor, Zayn Malik, ex member of successful boy band One Direction, was born and raised in Bradford.