From the bestselling author of the Adrian Mole series and The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year comes a brilliant, laugh-out-loud satire on modern Britain and the battle of the sexes 'There are two things that you should know about me immediately: the first is that I am beautiful, the second is that yesterday I killed a man. Both things were accidents . . .' When Midlands housewife Coventry Dakin kills her neighbour in a wild bid to prevent him from strangling his wife, she goes on the run. Finding herself alone and friendless in London she tries to lose herself in the city's maze of streets. There, she meets a bewildering cast of eccentric characters. From Professor Willoughby D'Eresby and his perpetually naked wife Letitia to Dodo, a care-in the-community inhabitant of Cardboard City, all of whom contrive to change Coventry in ways she could never have foreseen . . .

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Coventry Blitz of 14 November 1940 was a key event of the Second World War and in the growth of public consciousness of the destructive power of warfare. The medieval city, already undergoing rapid change, was largely destroyed on that night. The destruction was seen as an opportunity by some including the then City Architect, Donald Gibson. The result was the first of the master plans for post-war redevelopment of Britain's bombed city centres. The redevelopment of Coventry city centre to plans by Gibson and his successors provided an intensely urban and civilised centre, embodying new planning principles. Post-war Coventry was hugely influential and Gibson's ideas helped to shape the rebuilding of other city centres, the post-war new towns and developments in Europe. Despite incremental change in the subsequent decades the planning and architecture of Gibson's city centre are still clearly legible. The modern demands of a growing city on its centre are now very different from those of the post-war years. Coventry needs to grow and plan for its future and change will inevitably affect the city centre. This book aims to inform the public and decision makers of the significance of Coventry, and especially its centre, so that change can be managed in ways that will continue the life, use and enjoyment of the best of Coventry's remarkable post-war heritage.

The image of Coventry in flames was one of the most haunting of the Second World War. Yet the excitement and optimism of the 1950s and 1960s were succeeded by a quarter century of urban blight and economic slump. The collapse of manufacturing industry - machine tools, aeroplanes, cars - left a proud community adrift and demoralised. Today a revitalised twenty-first century city, Coventry has embraced the new millennium and evolved from bleak post-industrial desert to vibrant cultural oasis, in the process rediscovering a sense of purpose and a vision for the future. "The City of Coventry" tells the story of an experiment in social democracy carried out by a Labour-controlled council which envisaged the bomb shattered city as a model of urban regeneration and imaginative planning. Post-war reconstruction could be a striking success, as in the pedestrian-friendly Precinct and the bold new cathedral, or a notable failure as in the ever more intrusive ring roads and grim high-rise flats. In offering a fresh perspective on the city, this innovative volume of essays rediscovers Coventry as an inspiration for poets and painters such as Philip Larkin and Terry Frost, musicians as varied as Benjamin Britten and The Specials, and film-makers such as Humphrey Jennings, whose "Heart of Britain" was shot in the immediate aftermath of the Blitz. Adrian Smith skilfully mixes memoir, family history and meticulous scholarship to paint a complete and incisive portrait of Coventry. Drawing on new research into topics as diverse as the place of Surrealism in West Midlands culture and the shadowy presence of rugby league in a union bastion, Smith brings a unique insight into the recent history of his native city. Attractively presented, highly readable and with broad appeal, "The City of Coventry" is a lively re-examination of an iconic city of the twentieth century illuminating the profound changes that engulfed industrial England during and after the Second World War.

This anthology of essays by a group of distinguished scholars investigates post-1945 city planning in Britain; not from a technical viewpoint, but as a polemical, visual and educational phenomenon, shifting the focus of scholarly interest towards the often-neglected emotional and aesthetic aspects of post-war planning. Each essay is grounded in original archival research and sheds new light on this critical era in the development of modern town planning. This collection is a valuable resource for architectural, social and urban historians, as well as students and researchers offering new insights into the development of the mid-twentieth century city.