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Birmingham Local Information
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History of Birmingham
Featured Property
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Local Information
Birmingham Misc Links
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An ongoing £9bn regeneration programme has recently seen the transformation of the City’s historic Bull Ring area into a stylish £500m shopping centre with its futuristic Selfridges centrepiece. Directly adjacent is the Mailbox incorporating branches of Harvey Nichols, Jaeger, Emporio Armani, Hugo Boss and a wealth of leading designer label outlets and boutiques.
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Recently short-listed as a designated European capital of culture, Birmingham is home to a world-renowned Symphony Hall, the Royal Ballet Company (formerly Saddlers Wells) and the UK’s finest collection of pre-Raphaelite paintings. The City also supports a thriving avant garde arts scene notably through the Ikon Gallery and the imaginatively re-purposed Custard Factory.
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Devotees of ‘Lord of The Rings’, Britains favourite book, will know that its author, J R R Tolkein, drew much of his inspiration from a childhood spent in Birmingham. Likewise, those with a sweet tooth associate the City with Cadbury’s chocolate, which has been produced at the company’s Bournville factory since 1824.
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As the one-time ‘workshop of the world’, Birmingham nurtured the inventive capabilities of many pioneers of the Industrial Revolution: not least Joseph Priestley, Matthew Boulton and James Watt. Of particular interest to printers is the City’s association with John Baskerville, whose typeface is still in use to this day.
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| Whilst justly proud of its industrial heritage, Birmingham has been re-born as a centre of excellence in business tourism and service. The UK’s second city now maintains twinning and partnership relationships with Chicago, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Leipzig, Lyon and Milan, and regularly attracts key events as diverse as the EC G8 Summit and the Lions Club convention. |
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