City in West Midlands, England

Birmingham

Birmingham has more miles of canal than Venice, gave the world the pencil-case-friendly Cadbury bar and the first heavy metal riffs, and still isn't done surprising people.

Key information

County: West Midlands
Nation: England
Population: about 1.14 million (2021 Census)
Known for: Canals, the Industrial Revolution, Cadbury, jewellery, balti, heavy metal
What locals are called: Brummies
Famous people: J.R.R. Tolkien, Ozzy Osbourne, Joseph Chamberlain, Malala Yousafzai
Football clubs: Aston Villa, Birmingham City

About Birmingham

The city that out-canalled Venice

Here's the line every Brummie has ready: Birmingham has more miles of canal than Venice. It's true, with roughly 35 miles of waterway within the city, and it's a clue to how the place grew. Birmingham sits on no great river and no coast. What it had was coal and iron nearby, and clever people with workshops. The canals, arriving from the 1760s, carried raw materials in and finished goods out. Today Gas Street Basin and Brindleyplace, named for canal engineer James Brindley, are places to eat and stroll where barges once queued for loading. The canal network earned the city its place at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, and the Lunar Society, a circle of thinkers including Matthew Boulton, James Watt and Joseph Priestley, met here by the light of the full moon so they could get home safely.

Workshop of the world, a thousand trades

Birmingham was never about one big industry. It was about thousands of small ones. Buttons, buckles, guns, pens, toys, screws and jewellery all poured out of its backstreet workshops, which is why it was nicknamed the City of a Thousand Trades. The Jewellery Quarter still makes and sells around 40 per cent of the UK's jewellery. Its Pen Museum recalls the days when Birmingham produced most of the world's steel pen nibs. Boulton's Soho Manufactory, where he and Watt perfected steam engines, was among the first modern factories. Later, Joseph Chamberlain, a screw manufacturer turned mayor in the 1870s, cleaned up the town with gas, water and slum clearance, and was said to have made it the best-governed city in the world.

Cadbury, Bournville and a chocolate-box utopia

In 1879 the Quaker Cadbury family moved their chocolate works out of the grimy centre to a green site four miles south, and built a village around it. They called it Bournville. George Cadbury wanted workers to have gardens, fresh air and decent homes, and he built hundreds of houses with space for fruit trees. Pubs were left out of the plan. The factory made Dairy Milk, launched in 1905, and Cadbury World now tells the story. Bournville is still a garden village, and one of Britain's best-known examples of a planned community.

Balti, Brummie and the birthplace of heavy metal

Birmingham's food story is led by the balti, a spicy curry cooked and served in a thin steel bowl, which is strongly associated with the city's Pakistani and Kashmiri community. The Balti Triangle, around Ladypool Road and Stoney Lane in Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath, made it famous. In 2009 Birmingham City Council launched a campaign to secure protected geographical status for Birmingham balti. The city has also cooked up a sound. Black Sabbath formed here in 1968, and Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward's heavy, doom-laden riffs, shaped by Tony Iommi's factory-accident-damaged fingers and the grim industry around them, are widely seen as the start of heavy metal. Judas Priest and Napalm Death followed from the wider area. And the accent? Brummie is instantly recognisable. Locals are Brummies, from Brummagem, an old local form of the city's name.

Villa, Blues and the city that built the Bullring

Football here is fierce. Aston Villa, founded in 1874, were European champions in 1982 and are one of English football's oldest big clubs. Birmingham City, the Blues, are the city's other side, and the Second City derby between them is a proper grudge match. Cricket's Edgbaston hosts Test matches and the Birmingham Bears. The city also hosted the 2022 Commonwealth Games. The Bullring, a market site since the Middle Ages, now has the curved, silvery Selfridges building, covered in thousands of aluminium discs and opened in 2003. Nearby, the huge Library of Birmingham, with its gold-and-silver lattice, opened in 2013. Add Victoria Square, the Rotunda and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, and you've got a city that keeps rebuilding itself.

Tolkien's Midlands and other famous Brummies

J.R.R. Tolkien spent boyhood years in Birmingham, in Sarehole near the old mill, and many people think the area shaped the Shire. Two nearby towers, Perrott's Folly and the Edgbaston Waterworks, are often linked with The Two Towers. Malala Yousafzai, the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize winner, was treated and later schooled in Birmingham after being shot in Pakistan in 2012. The city's political line runs from Joseph Chamberlain to his sons Austen and Neville, both prominent in national politics. It's a city that makes things, from steam engines to chocolate bars to guitar riffs, and then makes something new.

The World Snooker Championship

Published 02 October 2026

The sport's biggest night ended after midnight on a single black ball, watched by more than 18 million people, in a theatre built for plays.

Sport

Chicken Tikka Masala