Worcestershire is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county. Over the centuries the county borders have been modified, but it was not until 1844 that substantial changes were made. This culminated with the abolition of Worcestershire in 1974 with its northern area becoming part of the West Midlands and the rest part of the county of Hereford and Worcester. However, in 1998 the county of Hereford and Worcester was abolished and Worcestershire was reconstituted without the northern area, which was ceded to the West Midlands.
Aston Villa Football Club is an English professional football club based in Aston, Birmingham. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of the English football league system. Founded in 1874, they have played at their home ground, Villa Park, since 1897. Aston Villa were one of the founder members of the Football League in 1888 and of the Premier League in 1992. Villa are one of the five English clubs to have won the European Cup, in 1981–82. They have also won the Football League First Division seven times, the FA Cup seven times, the League Cup five times, and the European (UEFA) Super Cup once. The club are currently ranked 5th in the all-time English top flight table, since its creation in 1888.
The West Midlands sometimes referred to as the "West Midlands County" is a metropolitan county in the West Midlands Region, England with a 2020 estimated population of 2,939,927, making it the second most populous county in England after Greater London. It appeared as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972, to cover parts of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. The county is a NUTS 2 region within the wider NUTS 1 region of the same name. It embraces seven metropolitan boroughs: the cities of Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton, and the boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull and Walsall. The county is also a combined authority which is over seen by the West Midlands Combined Authority which covers all seven boroughs and other non-constituent councils on economy, transport and housing.
Burton upon Trent, also known as Burton-on-Trent or simply Burton, is a market town in the borough of East Staffordshire in the county of Staffordshire, England, close to the border with Derbyshire. In 2011, it had a population of 72,299. The demonym for residents of the town is Burtonian. Burton is 11 miles (18 km) southwest of Derby, 27 miles (43 km) northwest of Leicester, 28 miles (45 km) west-southwest of Nottingham and 20 miles (32 km) south of the southern entrance to the Peak District National Park.
Dudley is a large market town and administrative centre in the county of West Midlands, England, 5.5 miles (8.9 km) south-east of Wolverhampton and 8 miles (13 km) north-west of Birmingham. Historically an exclave of Worcestershire, the town is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley and in 2011 had a population of 79,379. The Metropolitan Borough, which includes the towns of Stourbridge and Halesowen, had a population of 312,900. In 2014 the borough council named Dudley as the capital of the Black Country.
The Brummie dialect, or more formally the Birmingham dialect, is spoken by many people in Birmingham, England, and some of its surrounding areas. "Brummie" is also a demonym for people from Birmingham. It is often erroneously used in referring to all accents of the West Midlands, as it is markedly distinct from the traditional accent of the adjacent Black Country, but modern-day population mobility has tended to blur the distinction. For instance, Dudley-born comedian Lenny Henry, Walsall-born rock musician Noddy Holder, Smethwick-reared actress Julie Walters, Wollaston-born soap actress Jan Pearson, Solihull-born motoring journalist and TV presenter Richard Hammond, and West Bromwich-born comedian Frank Skinner are sometimes mistaken for Brummie-speakers by people outside the West Midlands county.
The Birmingham pub bombings were carried out on 21 November 1974, when bombs exploded in two public houses in Birmingham, England, killing 21 people and injuring 182 others.
The Glee Club is a chain of independent live stand-up comedy and live music venues in the UK. The first Glee Club was opened by Mark Tughan in Birmingham's Chinese Quarter in 1994, the first dedicated comedy club to open in the United Kingdom outside London.
Heart West Midlands is a regional radio station owned and operated by Global as part of the Heart network. It broadcasts to the West Midlands from studios in Birmingham.
William McGregor was a Scottish association football administrator in the Victorian era who is regarded as the founder of the Football League, the first organised association football league in the world.
Sir George Adrian Hayhurst Cadbury, was the chairman of Cadbury and Cadbury Schweppes for 24 years, and a British Olympic rower. He was a pioneer in raising the awareness and stimulating the debate on corporate governance and produced the Cadbury Report, a code of best practice which served as a basis for reform of corporate governance around the world.
Racing Club Warwick Football Club is a football club based in Warwick, Warwickshire, and competes in the Midland League Premier Division.
Birmingham and Solihull Rugby Football Club is a rugby union club representing Birmingham and Solihull which was formed in 1989 by a merger of the original Birmingham and Solihull rugby clubs, which were both established over 60 years ago. They currently play in the Midlands 4 West (South), having dropped out of Midlands Premier following their relegation from National League 2 South at the end of the 2018–19 season, becoming an amateur club.
Ed James is a British disc jockey, broadcaster and journalist, who currently hosts Drive Time for Heart West Midlands in Birmingham alongside Gemma Hill. He moved to the Drive Time Show in 2019, after presenting the Breakfast Show since 2002 on Heart. He is also a columnist with the Birmingham Mail, Chairman of the Birmingham Press Club and is the co-founder of content marketing agency HDY Agency.
Keith Wilkinson is a former British television reporter and news correspondent for 35 years. In September 2019 ITV News announced he was leaving them to become a freelance writer and author.
Birmingham is a major city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. It is the second-largest city, second-largest metropolitan area and third-largest urban area in the United Kingdom, with roughly 1.2 million inhabitants within the city area, 2.8 million inhabitants within the urban area and 4.3 million inhabitants within the metropolitan area. The city proper is the most populated English local government district. Birmingham is commonly referred to as the "second city of the United Kingdom".
The Birmingham Gay Village is an LGBT district or "gaybourhood" next to the Chinese Quarter in Birmingham city centre, centred along Hurst Street, which hosts many LGBT-friendly businesses. The village is visited by thousands of people every week and has a thriving night life featuring clubs, sports bars, cocktail bars, cabaret bars and shops, with most featuring live entertainment including music, dancing and drag queens.
The literary tradition of Birmingham originally grew out of the culture of religious puritanism that developed in the town in the 16th and 17th centuries. Birmingham's location away from established centres of power, its dynamic merchant-based economy and its weak aristocracy gave it a reputation as a place where loyalty to the established power structures of church and feudal state were weak, and saw it emerge as a haven for free-thinkers and radicals, encouraging the birth of a vibrant culture of writing, printing and publishing.
Birmingham's culture of popular music first developed in the mid-1950s. By the early 1960s the city's music scene had emerged as one of the largest and most vibrant in the country; a "seething cauldron of musical activity", with over 500 bands constantly exchanging members and performing regularly across a well-developed network of venues and promoters. By 1963 the city's music was also already becoming recognised for what would become its defining characteristic: the refusal of its musicians to conform to any single style or genre. Birmingham's tradition of combining a highly collaborative culture with an open acceptance of individualism and experimentation dates back as far back as the 18th century, and musically this has expressed itself in the wide variety of music produced within the city, often by closely related groups of musicians, from the "rampant eclecticism" of the Brum beat era, to the city's "infamously fragmented" post-punk scene, to the "astonishing range" of distinctive and radical electronic music produced in the city from the 1980s to the early 21st century.
The North Midlands Rugby Football Union is a governing body for rugby union in part of The Midlands, England. The union is the constituent body of the Rugby Football Union for the counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire and the Greater Birmingham area.
