The city is a rich tapestry, home to native Coventrians and newcomers of every nationality and ethnicity. But behind the modernity, Coventry's storied past lives on in its architecture and artworks, its visionary centre and outlying council estates.
This book reveals some of its hard-to-find origins as a city with a major medieval influence, and the relics of its industrial boom as a centre for making cloth and clocks, cars and bikes. But it was manufacturing munitions that made it a target for the German Luftwaffe in WWII, flattening its medieval heart, and prompting the distinctive look and feel of its centre and surrounds today.
It details everything from a quirky homage to 11th-century Lady Godiva, to the remnants of the walled city of the English Civil War that spawned the phrase ‘sent to Coventry’. From the remnants of the ruined cathedral to the boho Fargo village, from the origins of the influential Two-Tone music style born here, to the impact of UK City of Culture 2021 status, it’s all uncovered inside.
This unusual guidebook invites the inquisitive to head off the beaten track and explore many of the city’s lesser-known places.