Coventry - UK City of Culture

Coventry's Lady Godiva in bronze. Photo by Rob Tysall.

As most people will know, Coventry, my home city, is to be the UK City of Culture 2021. Naturally, its citizens are celebrating, and hoping that the new status is going to bring more prosperity into the city, as it has done for Hull, the current UK City of Culture.

There was competition for the title from Paisley, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Swansea. And actually, if Sunderland had won it, that would have been my second choice as my parents and past ancestors all hail from there.

The title is awarded every four years and Coventry will be the third UK City of Culture. Londonderry being the first in 2013, followed by Hull. Our city has so much going for it despite no longer having the motor and machine tools industries that it once had. During the 1950s and 60s Coventry was the second largest car manufacturing city in the world. It also led the way with machine tools. Alfred Herbert Ltd was once the largest machine tools manufacturing business in the world. And while that’s no longer there, the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum is named after him.

The city's present Lady Godiva, Pru Poretta.
Photo Rob Tysall

 Sir Frank Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine was born in Coventry. There’s a centre in honour of his work at the Midlands Air Museum, Baginton, which is just on the city boundaries. And there’s a statue of him alongside the futuristic-looking Whittle Arch in Millennium Place in the city centre.

Earlier in the city’s history Coventry pioneered many industries – bicycles, clocks and watches, ribbons. In early Medieval times it was a thriving market town. Today, the city’s museums, buildings and monuments remind people of its industrious past. And today, businesses are flourishing, as are its Universities.

The city’s most famous monuments of course, are our two cathedrals: the ruins of the old Cathedral of St Michaels, so badly destroyed in the Coventry Blitz of 1940, and the awesome New Cathedral, designed by Sir Basil Spence and consecrated in 1962. Not forgetting also, the City’s most famous woman, Lady Godiva.

On the literature scene, Coventry, writer and poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) was born in the city and later became a university librarian in Hull. The Philip Larkin Society which was founded ten years after his death, point out that it’s fitting that Coventry should be taking on the mantle from Hull, which is the place where Larkin spent most of his adult life, and which shares many historical and cultural similarities.

Ann Evans meets Lee Child

Author, Lee Child, best known for his Jack Reacher novels was also born in Coventry in 1954. He spent his early years in the city before moving to Birmingham. I was fortunate to meet him at the Harrogate Crime Writers festival this summer, where he chatted to me about the things he remembered about Coventry.

Another famous early writer was Angela Brazil (1868 – 1947), who was born in Preston, Lancashire but moved to Coventry in 1911. She was one of the first British writers of modern schoolgirl stories, publishing nearly 50 books of girls’ fiction, many set in boarding schools. Her stories remained popular until the 1960s; and her collection is now in Coventry Library.

From my own point of view, Coventry has inspired my writing, with the illustrated Children’s History of Coventry, which many of the city’s schools have in their libraries. And my YA novel, Celeste, a time slip thriller set in Coventry, with the cathedrals as the backdrop.

How about you, how inspirational is your city to you and your writing?

My trailer for Celeste features the old and new cathedrals, and you can view it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFDBEt9o3Fw

 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00KQ8XIGE

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Childrens-History-Coventry-Ann-Evans/dp/184993150X