Birmingham

Lifford Reservoir in the Kings Norton district of Birmingham, England was built by the Worcester & Birmingham Canal company in 1815 to compensate... Lifford Mill for water lost to the canal. It is located at the junction of the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal and the Worcester and Birmingham Canal and is on the River Rea Cycle Route. Angling is permitted subject to a charge outside the spring close season. Fish in the reservoir include tench, carp, pike, eels, perch, roach and bream.
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St Andrew's is an association football stadium in the Bordesley district of Birmingham, England. It has been the home ground of Birmingham City... Football Club for more than a century. Constructed and opened in 1906 to replace the Muntz Street ground, which had become too small to meet the club's needs, the original St Andrew's could hold an estimated 75,000 spectators, housed in one grandstand and a large uncovered terrace. The attendance record, variously recorded as 66,844 or 67,341, was set at a 1939 FA Cup tie against Everton. During the Second World War, St Andrew's suffered bomb damage and the grandstand, housing a temporary fire station, burned down in an accidental fire. In the 1950s, the club replaced the stand and installed floodlights, and later erected a second small stand and roofed over the open terraces, but there were few further changes. The ground became dilapidated: a boy was killed when a wall collapsed during rioting in the 1980s.
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The International Convention Centre is a major conference venue in central Birmingham, England. The centre includes Symphony Hall and it faces... Centenary Square. The building has another entrance leading to the canals of Birmingham. The Convention Quarter area, which includes Brindleyplace, is located directly opposite the building on the other side of the canal. It is part of the NEC group. The building was designed by Percy Thomas Partnership and Renton Howard Wood Levin. The foundation stone was laid by Jacques Delors as a start of another 4 years and 5 months of construction. In all, over 1,500 workers helped construct the building. Over 60,000 cubic metres of concrete were used. The site was opened on June 12, 1991 by Queen Elizabeth II. Funds of £49.7 million were provided by the European Council. The total cost of construction was £200 million. It is on the site of the Prince of Wales Theatre and Bingley Hall, the world's first purpose-built exhibition hall, opened in 1850. Also on the site were numerous houses fronting King Edwards Place as well as a brewery and inn.
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The Bull Ring is a major commercial area of Birmingham, England. It has been an important feature of Birmingham since the Middle Ages, when its... market was first held. Two shopping centres have been built in the area; in the 1960s, and then in 2003; the latter is styled as one word, Bullring. The site is located on the edge of the sandstone city ridge which results in the steep gradient towards Digbeth. The slope drops approximately 15 metres from New Street to St Martin's Church. The current shopping centre was the busiest in the United Kingdom in 2004 with 36.5 million visitors. It houses one of only four Selfridges department stores, the fourth largest Debenhams and the first Forever 21 store in Europe. Consequently, the centre has been a huge success, attracting customers from all over the world, including New York. The market legally began in 1154 when Peter de Bermingham, a local landowner, obtained a Charter of Marketing Rights from King Henry II.
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Stephen Lawrence "Steve" Winwood is an English international recording artist whose career spans nearly 50 years. He is a songwriter and a musician... whose genres include soul music , R&B, rock, blues-rock, pop-rock, and jazz. Winwood is a multi-instrumentalist who plays the electric organ, synthesizers, bass, drums, guitar, mandolin, violin and other stringed instruments, besides having done notable work as a producer. His trademark style is singing in a tenor voice and playing the Hammond organ. In addition to his solo career, he was a key member of the bands The Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, Blind Faith and Go. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Traffic in 2004. Winwood has won numerous Grammy Awards in the United States. In 2008, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Winwood #33 in its 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. In 2005, Winwood was honoured as a BMI Icon at the annual BMI London Awards for his "enduring influence on generations of music makers." During his teens, Winwood played Hammond B-3 organ and guitar in "pick-up" bands that backed up well-known US blues performers.
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Roy Adrian Wood is an English singer-songwriter and musician. He was particularly successful in the 1960s and 1970s as member and co-founder of the... bands The Move, Electric Light Orchestra, and Wizzard. As a songwriter, he contributed a number of hits to the repertoire of these bands. Wood was born in Kitts Green, Birmingham, England. His first group in Birmingham in the early 1960s was The Falcons, which he left in 1963 to join Gerry Levene and the Avengers. He then moved to Mike Sheridan and the Nightriders . During this period, Wood attended the Moseley College of Art, from which he was expelled in 1964. From this basis, and other Birmingham-based groups, was formed The Move, and they quickly entered the UK Singles Chart. Their single "Night of Fear" climbed to #2 in early 1967. Their third hit, "Flowers in the Rain", was the first song played at the launch of BBC Radio 1 in 1967, and the band evolved over a three year period. After the departure of The Move's lead singer Carl Wayne, Wood's influence became more prominent.
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Thomas Trotter is a British concert organist. He is Birmingham City Organist and organist of St. Margaret's, Westminster and visiting Professor of... Organ at the Royal College of Music, London. He was a pupil at Malvern College and organ scholar of, and studied music at, King's College, Cambridge. He also studied under Marie-Claire Alain, winning the Prix de Virtuosité in her class. He won first prize in the interpretation competition at the St Albans International Organ Festival in 1979 and made his debut in London’s Royal Festival Hall the following year. He was appointed Birmingham City Organist in 1983, succeeding Sir George Thalben-Ball. In May 2001 he was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society award for Best Instrumentalist, the first organist to win this award. In July 2003 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Central England. In Birmingham he plays regularly in the city's Symphony Hall, usually including contemporary compositions in his recitals. He is also noted for playing transcriptions of orchestral music, something which is a tradition at St Margaret's, Westminster, where he is organist.
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Trevor John Eve is a British film and television actor. In 1979 he gained fame as the eponymous lead in the detective series Shoestring and is also... known for his role as Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd in BBC television drama Waking the Dead. Eve was born in Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire , the son of Elsie and Stewart Frederick Eve. His father was English, and his Welsh mother was from the Mumbles area of Swansea, South Wales. Educated at Bromsgrove School, he had little acting experience during his school days. In his early years Eve wanted to be an artist but was dissuaded from this career path by his father for financial reasons. He instead initially studied architecture at Kingston Polytechnic College in London but dropped out of the course to enroll at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art . Eve has enjoyed a long and successful acting career on stage, television and film, with his career spanning back to the 1970s. One of his early stage successes was portraying Paul McCartney in Willy Russell's play John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert at the Lyric Theatre in London's West End in 1974.
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Martin Shaw is an English actor. He is best known for his roles in shows such as The Professionals, The Chief, Judge John Deed and Inspector George... Gently. According to Shaw, his first stage appearance was at age three, during an amateur show in which his parents were performing. At Great Barr School, where musician Steve Winwood was a classmate, Shaw excelled in English literature and drama lessons. At sixteen, he was offered a scholarship to a Birmingham drama school. Declining the scholarship, he left school and, on the advice of his parents, he sought employment. One job was in the office of a brass foundry. At eighteen, Shaw moved to London to attend the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He served his apprenticeship in repertory as an assistant stage manager at the Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch and the Bristol Old Vic. Shaw took key roles in the first revival of Look Back in Anger ; in the National Theatre's Saturday, Sunday, Monday opposite Laurence Olivier ; and in A Streetcar Named Desire presented by the Piccadilly Theatre in 1974.
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Jasper Carrott OBE is an English comedian, actor, television presenter and personality. Born in Shaftmoor Lane, Acocks Green , Birmingham, Carrott... was educated at Acocks Green Primary School and Moseley Grammar School. He then worked as a trainee buyer at a city centre department store called the Beehive with schoolfriend Bev Bevan. In February 1969 he started his own folk club, "The Boggery", in nearby Solihull with his friend Les Ward. Here, Carrott performed folk songs and did MC duties. Before long, his banter with the audience overtook the actual songs: he became known more as a comedian than a singer. He also worked as a musical agent , as Fingimigig, managing Harvey Andrews. He toured the UK, appearing in rugby clubs and the like. He independently recorded an album, financed by himself, called "Jasper Carrot – In the Club", which he sold out of the back of his car/van.
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Kenneth George "Kenny" Baker is a British actor and musician, best known as the man inside R2-D2 in the popular Star Wars film series. Baker, who... stands 3 ft 8 in tall, was educated in Birmingham and boarding school in Kent. He is an only child, and wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and be an engraver but hadn't received sufficient education. He went to live with his stepmother in Hastings, and in 1951 was approached on the street by a lady who invited him to join a theatrical troupe of dwarves and midgets. This was his first taste of show business. Later, he joined a circus for a brief time, learned to ice-skate and appeared in many ice shows. He had formed a successful comedy act called the Minitones with entertainer Jack Purvis when George Lucas hired him to be the man inside R2-D2 in Star Wars in 1977. Baker appears in all six of the episodic theatrical Star Wars films. Baker played an additional role in 1983's Return of the Jedi as Paploo, the Ewok who steals an Imperial speeder bike. He was originally going to play Wicket, but he fell ill and that role was handed over to Warwick Davis.
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John Taylor is an English musician who is best known as the bass guitarist and co-founder of pop rock band Duran Duran. Duran Duran were one of the... most popular groups in the world during the 1980s due to their revolutionary music videos that played in heavy rotation in the early days of MTV. Taylor is one of Duran Duran's most popular members. Taylor played with Duran Duran from its founding in 1978 until 1997, when he left to pursue a solo recording and film career. He recorded a dozen solo releases through his company "Trust The Process" over the next four years, had a lead role in the movie Sugar Town, and made appearances in a half dozen other film projects. He rejoined Duran Duran for a reunion of the original five members of the group in 2001. Taylor also founded two supergroup side projects: Power Station and Neurotic Outsiders. Taylor grew up in Hollywood, a suburb of Birmingham, England.
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Clare Short is a British politician, and a member of the Labour Party. She was the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Ladywood from 1983 to 2010;... for most of this period she was a Labour Party MP, but she resigned the party whip in 2006 and served the remainder of her term as an Independent. She stood down as a Member of Parliament at the 2010 general election. Short was Secretary of State for International Development in the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair from 3 May 1997 until her resignation from that post on 12 May 2003. Clare Short was born in Birmingham, England in 1946 to Irish Catholic parents from County Armagh, Northern Ireland. She would later be supportive of peaceful Sinn Féin initiatives, although she was never a supporter of IRA violence, some of the worst of which was inflicted in a 1974 bombing of her home city of Birmingham. Short was briefly married to a fellow student at 18 after she had a child at 17. Their son was given up for adoption, and did not make contact with his birth mother until 1996.
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Stephen Anthony James Duffy is an English singer/songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He was a founding member and vocalist/bassist of Duran... Duran. He went on to record as a solo performer under several different names, and is the singer and songwriter for The Lilac Time with his older brother Nick. He has also co-written with Robbie Williams and Steven Page. While attending the School of Foundation Studies & Experimental Workshop at Birmingham Polytechnic Duffy met John Taylor. Together they formed the group Duran Duran, along with Taylor's childhood friend, Nick Rhodes. While Taylor was the guitarist and Rhodes played the synthesizer, Duffy was the band's vocalist/lyricist and bassist. He left both the school and the band in 1979, before Duran Duran signed with EMI in 1980. He went on to form Obviously Five Believers, sometimes known as The Subterranean Hawks or The Hawks, and he made his first four-track recordings. The Hawks' only single, "Words of Hope", was released in 1981.
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Nicholas Berkeley "Nick" Mason is an English drummer and songwriter, best known for his work with Pink Floyd. He was the only constant member of the... band since its formation in 1965. Despite solely writing only a few Pink Floyd songs, Mason has contributed to some of Pink Floyd's most popular songs such as "Interstellar Overdrive", "A Saucerful Of Secrets" and "Echoes". He also competes in auto racing events, such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans. He was the only Pink Floyd member to be featured on every one of their albums. The son of the documentary film maker Bill Mason, he was born in Birmingham but brought up in Hampstead, London and attended Frensham Heights School, near Farnham, Surrey. He later studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic , where he teamed up with Roger Waters, Bob Klose and Richard Wright in 1964 to form Pink Floyd's predecessor, Sigma 6. Mason has been the drummer on every Pink Floyd album .
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Geezer Butler is an English musician and songwriter. Butler is best known as the bassist and lyricist of heavy metal band Black Sabbath. He was also... involved in Heaven & Hell from 2006 to 2010. Butler formed his first band, Rare Breed, with old friend John "Ozzy" Osbourne in the autumn of 1967. Separated for a time, Osbourne and Butler reunited in the blues foursome, Polka Tulk, along with guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward. They renamed their band Earth, but after finding a band in the small-time English circuit with the same name, soon adopted Black Sabbath in early 1969. Butler played rhythm guitar in his pre-Sabbath days, including with Rare Breed, but when Sabbath was formed, Iommi made it clear that he would not want to play with another guitarist, so Butler moved to bass. Butler is noted as being one of the first bassists to use a Wah-wah pedal on his bass, as showcased at the beginning of "N.I.B." which inspired many later bassists.
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