Richard Vinen - Second City

Richard Vinen is Professor of History at Kings College, London and the author of a number of major books. He won the Wolfson Prize for History for National Service (2014).

I am grateful to my agent, James Pullen, and my editor, Simon Winder, who supported a somewhat idiosyncratic project with great enthusiasm. Rebecca Lee saw the book through the press with her usual efficiency and good humour. This is the fourth of my books to be edited by Bela Cunha. Authors whose prose has been sharpened by Belas rigour and whose egos have been salved by her kindness will understand why I was so keen to obtain her service again. Archivists at Birmingham Central Library, the Warwick Modern Records Centre and the Bodleian Library in Oxford were extraordinarily helpful. I owe particular debts to Anabel Farrell in Oxford and Martin Sanders in Warwick. The Conservative Party kindly authorized me to quote from their archives, and staff at the BBC, particularly Samantha Blake, went to great lengths to allow me to quote from the material that was assembled for the documentary The Colony. I am also grateful to Sara Parker and Julia Johnson for their help with this matter.

Credits for pictures are given separately but I am particularly grateful to Janet Mendelsohn and Marc Levitt for the quick and gracious way in which they responded to my request to use one of Janets extraordinary photographs. I also owe a great deal to Andrew Milton, who took a number of photographs of Birmingham on my behalf. I am also grateful to Fiona Audley of the Irish Post for her help in tracing one of the excellent photographs by Brendan Farrell.

I am grateful to Curtis Brown for permission to quote from David Lodges Changing Places and to Bloodaxe Books for permission to quote from the poems of Roy Fisher.

David Gottlieb, Jon Parry and Paul Readman provided useful advice about aspects of this book. David Edgerton was, as always, a stimulating interlocutor. David Carpenter, Helen Parr and Munro Price read the whole manuscript and made many helpful suggestions. Talita Ilacqua and Tom Kelsey did much to sustain my morale.

This is a highly personal book and my greatest debts are personal ones to my mother and father, Susan and Joe, to my sister, Katie Vinen, and to my brother-in-law, Richard Wheater. Above all, I owe more than I can say to Alison Henwood and to our children Emma and Alex.

Source: City of Birmingham, Abstract of Birmingham Statistics, 19791981

Source: City of Birmingham, Abstract of Birmingham Statistics, 19791980

Key

CB County Borough

MB Metropolitan Borough

RD Rural District

UD Urban District