I have now had the chance to listen to all five programmes in Helen Castor’s radio series ‘England: Made in the Middle’, which Maria mentioned, and personally thought they were very interesting. I didn’t know Helen Castor grew up in Leamington Spa, and so it’s good to have her stand up for the Midlands and their place in English history.
The programmes are undoubtedly an excellent résumé of everything the English Midlands have contributed to the history of the Country, and she manages to pack plenty in - from Mercia and King Offa, through the Luna Society, Samuel Johnson, Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin, John Clare, D. H. Lawrence, Beowulf, J. R. R. Tolkien, Edward Elgar, Richard Cobden, Thomas Attwood, Ned Ludd and Robin Hood, to the Miners’ Strike, Leicester City’s premiership victory, the Pilgrim Fathers on the Mayflower, the Civil Wars and the Wars of the Roses! Not forgetting Richard III and William Shakespeare of course! I would certainly recommend it, and it definitely makes you proud to be a Midlander
I particularly liked the opening music, which I believe is the ‘Warwickshire Lads’, and in the opening sequence where an announcer says “Like some jungle growth Birmingham stretched and spread under the thrust and urge of the Industrial Revolution”, which I thought very evocative.
