Made in Birmingham
Paul Lay on the self-deprecating nature of Brummies.
The first statue of Horatio Nelson was erected not in London’s Trafalgar Square but in Birmingham, in 1809. It has been fiddled with and moved since then and now stands between Selfridges and the spruced up Bull Ring shopping centre. Nelson was born in Norfolk, a long way from Birmingham, a city with little maritime heritage, but he made a splash when he visited the bustling town, as it then was, in August 1802, enough to inspire the locals to raise £2,500 to commemorate his heroics.
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