SECOND CITY: BIRMINGHAM AND THE FORGING MODERN BRITAIN (HB)

Birmingham is the lens through which modern English history comes into focus. This book presents figures everyone has heard of, like Tolkien and Duran Duran, and those that everyone ought to have heard of, such as the Communist convenor at the Longbridge factory and the West Indians interviewed for the 1960s documentary The Colony. And it captures the uncomfortable contrasts and transitions – full employment to post-industrial stagnation, multi-culturalism alongside racial tension – which shaped the lives of thousands of people in England’s second city.