h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

No there you go you have learnt something this fine morning

Fine? Which part of the world are you in at the moment? Clearly not the Midlands!

Scotland

Spent a year living and working just around the corner from Coventry City's ground. IN fact the floodlights illumuniated my bedroom.

In fact there is an interesting post war fact about Coventry.

Coventry City although they had very little sucess. Reaching the FA Cup final once and remaining largely mid-table were until their recent relegation to Division one the 4th longest surviving team in the top flight of English Football only Arsenal, Everton and Liverpool ahd survived longer than the Sky Blues.

Lucky you, Demon!
Well, at least the electricity bill wasn't so horrendous!

Whoami?
*ing the topic drift*

errr so was i actually wrong?

The Royal Mail also refer to Coventry and Warwickshire and as u've also noticed that little too bit company called the bbc!

So my original question - can you ignore the fact that coventry existed in warwickshire for hundreds of years and has only recently been bundled into a "here today, gone tomorrow" metroplitan borough?


Z.

ps. The airport is actually in warwickshire and is only seperated from coventry by a road width! Coventry moving into the west mids made the shape of warwickshire a quite unusual shape!

It did indeed - but since it is currently correct to say 'West Midlands', that should be the case. Any change would surely then be the an issue for an update.

The West Midlands is a county division - see
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/England/West_Midlands
and you'll notice that the WM contains Metropolitan Boroughs - I don't think it actually *is* one as such...

Whoami?
Sub-editor, h2g2

Thanks for the input everyone - I am hoping to incorporate all your suggestions tomorrow.

Warwickshire or West Midlands ? Coventry describes itself as the city in Shakespeare country - probably the grossest abuse of the goods descriptions act in current use, however, historically and in the minds of Coventry people, Coventry is in Warwickshire, facts state otherwise we all know, but even the post office now accepts that Coventry is in Warwickshire. In fact so are Warwick, Rugby, and Stratford Upon Avon as they all have CV postcodes. (Or was that consignia?) We all enjoy a well crafted identity change - not.

I accept that for H2G2 purposes I will probably have to put West Midlands, but I haven't given up yet......

I am planning a seperate entry on Coventry City Football Club, which really would make this entry too big, in fact I'm having problems keeping it at all in proportion.

RL is intruding at the moment in the form of a scheduled powerdown of the datacentre, otherwise more progress would have been made. Apolgies

Due to pressures of RL I will remove this from PR whilst I make your additions, I am not going to be able to do this as rapidly as I would like and I don't think I should have it cluttering up places for a couple of weeks whilst I fiddle.

With all the other suggestions, you might add this link:

http://www.coventry.gov.uk/cocoon/index.xml

OK - just to clear up the West Midlands thing for good:

1. The BBC refer to Coventry and Warwickshire beacuse that's the name of the radio station is currently co-broadcasting with WM in the region. Mercia FM call it Coventry and Warwickshire because that's their broadcast area, too.

2. The Royal Mail give CV codes to Warwickshire addresses because the post code system is quite old and because it works from cities' major sorting offices. There aren't any cities in Warwickshire.

3. Coventry and Warwickshire wouldn't be right if Coventry was in Warwickshire - you wouldn't say 'Warwick and Warwickshire', would you?

4. It's today that matters - h2g2 aims to be accurate to the present - and so we need to at least try to make it that way. I would anticipate a correction being made by a Sub or the Editors if it's not done before...

Whoami?

Aside from the great Warwickshire debate (hell, I live in Brum and we've got Warwickshire county cricket ground - if we're not in the west midlands, who is? really - a moot point) the paragraph on the Tudor kings and queens confused me.
You say Queen Mary was a prisoner of her sister Elizabeth? I've never heard of that before - or are you possibly referring to Mary Queen of Scots - more likely I imagine. It was Queen Mary who imprisoned Elizabeth (an nowhere near Coventry).

Other than that, a fine entry if, as other say, it does end somewhat abruptly. I look forward to seeing it in the edited guide

Orcus

You're right Orcus - I've muddled my Marys - corrected.