The incredible story of how the First and Second World Wars changed Coventry forever.

During World War One, the city of Coventry was a powerhouse that kept the barrels loaded and the engines of war purring. An industrial giant, Coventry produced munitions by the million and built tanks, aircraft and fighting vehicles of every description. It never slept.??Coventry in the Great War commemorates the centenary of the outbreak of the conflict in 1914, telling the dour and ungilded story of the people who laboured and endured for over four grueling years. This eclectic narrative of the lives of city residents and incomers alike is juxtaposed with often-bloody accounts from the many theatres of war to give a representative and nuanced picture of one of the darkest chapters in world history. ??The 100th anniversary of the firing of the first fateful bullet is not a time for celebration but rather an opportunity for quiet reflection and studied lesson learning. The 2,599 men of Coventry who died in the cause of freedom deserve no less. ??During the First World War, the advanced state of the machine tooling industry in the city meant that pre-war production could quickly be turned to war production purposes, with the Coventry Ordnance Works assuming the role of one of the leading production centres in the UK, manufacturing a quarter of all British aircraft produced during the war.??But the experience of war also impacted on the inhabitants of the area, from the initial enthusiasm for sorting out the German Kaiser in time for Christmas 1914, to the gradual realization of the enormity of human sacrifice the families of Coventry were committed to as the war stretched out over the next four years. ??The Great War affected everyone. At home there were wounded soldiers in military hospitals, refugees from Belgium and later on German prisoners of war. There were food and fuel shortages and disruption to schooling. The role of women changed dramatically and they undertook a variety of work undreamed of in peacetime. Extracts from contemporary letters reveal their heroism and give insights into what it was like under battle conditions.

The First World War claimed over 995,000 British lives, and its legacy continues to be remembered today. Great War Britain: Coventry offers an intimate portrayal of the city and its people living in the shadow of the 'war to end all wars'. A beautifully illustrated and highly accessible volume, it describes local reaction to the outbreak of war; charts the experience of individuals who enlisted; the changing face of industry; the work of the many hospitals in the area; the effect of the conflict on local children; the women who defied convention to play a vital role on the home front; and concludes with a chapter dedicated to how the city and its people coped with the transition to life in peacetime once more. The Great War story of Coventry is told through the voices of those who were there and is vividly illustrated through evocative images from the archives of Culture Coventry.

The German Luftwaffe's air raid on Coventry, England on the night of November 14, 1940 represented a new kind of air warfare. Aimed primarily at obliterating all aspects of city life, it was systematic, thorough, unconnected to any immediate military goal, and indifferent to civilian casualties. In a single night, roughly two-thirds of the city's buildings were damaged or destroyed as the bombers laid waste to legitimate industrial targets and civilian structures alike. The old St. Michael's Cathedral, a 14th century Gothic structure that burned to the ground that night, still stands in ruins today as a testament to the city's destruction during the raid. Pragmatic British government propagandists would exploit Coventry's perceived status as a "historic town," playing down the city's industrial reputation. This would prove to be a powerful tool, and, as Frederick Taylor shows, was instrumental in tipping public opinion in the then-neutral United States away from isolationism and in favor of help for Britain. But the bombing would also set a dangerous and destructive precedent as Allied air forces would study the Germans' methods in the attack and ultimately employ similar tactics in their equally ruthless and destructive attacks on German cities, eventually leading to the bombing of Hamburg in 1943 and Dresden in 1945 that killed hundreds of thousands, mostly civilians. On the 75th anniversary of the Coventry bombing, acclaimed historian Frederick Taylor brilliantly narrates this momentous act and analyzes its impact on World War II and the moral quandaries it still engenders about the nature of warfare.

NPR's Favorite Books of 2019 Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction with the Outline Trilogy, three “literary masterpieces” (The Washington Post) whose narrator, Faye, perceives the world with a glinting, unsparing intelligence while remaining opaque to the reader. Lauded for the precision of her prose and the quality of her insight, Cusk is a writer of uncommon brilliance. Now, in Coventry, she gathers a selection of her nonfiction writings that both offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her fiction and forges a startling critical voice on some of our most urgent personal, social, and artistic questions. Coventry encompasses memoir, cultural criticism, and writing about literature, with pieces on family life, gender, and politics, and on D. H. Lawrence, Françoise Sagan, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Named for an essay Cusk published in Granta (“Every so often, for offences actual or hypothetical, my mother and father stop speaking to me. There’s a funny phrase for this phenomenon in England: it’s called being sent to Coventry”), this collection is pure Cusk and essential reading for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, and dazzling to behold.

On the night of the Luftwaffe's devastating bombing of Coventry, two women traverse the city and transform their hearts.

The Luftwaffe's targetting and destruction of Coventry city remains the biggest and most destructive air raid on British soil during the Second World War. Seen as a centre of British armaments production, the German high command wished to inflict terror and panic on the British public, a plan that had paid dividends during their relentless conquest of France that year. Attacking over two nights in November, 1940 they systematically bombed and destroyed the bulk of the city, making thousands homeless, and killing over 400 men, women and children. Such was the devastation, panic and disorder it wrought, that Winston Churchill ordered a news blackout for three weeks in order to quell the unease and morale-sapping effect that the raid had. But people at the time acted with great bravery to save those trapped in bombed out and burning buildings, as well as caring for those badly injured (of which there were thousands), and fighting the Nazi planes coming in to attack the city itself. Now, for the very first time we interview those veterans who survived the raid and helped fight the flames and bombs to tell the story of this iconic event. Such was the effect it had on the country that when Bomber Command began night time raids against German cities — Hamburg, Cologne and most famously, Dresden — the call 'Remember Coventry!' went up.

In March 1982, the guided-missile destroyer HMS Coventry was one of a small squadron of ships on exercise off Gibraltar. By the end of April that year, she was sailing south in the vanguard of the Task Force towards the Falklands. On 25 May, Coventry was attacked and hit by three bombs. The explosions tore out most of her port side and killed nineteen of the crew, leaving many others injured. Within twenty minutes, she had capsized, and was to sink early the next day. In her final moments, when all those not killed by the explosions had been evacuated from the ship, her Captain, David Hart Dyke, himself badly burned, climbed down her starboard side and into a life-raft. This is his compelling and moving story.

How can we begin to make sense of the Great War now that over 100 years have passed since it ended with the defeat of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman empire and Bulgaria, and the collapse of Tsarist Russia? The conflict had such a profound influence on world history that is it difficult to reconcile the different perspectives and draw clear conclusions. That is why this thought-provoking collection of original essays on the outcome of the war and its aftermath is of such value.It completes the trilogy of ground-breaking volumes conceived and edited by Peter Liddle which presents the latest scholarly thinking about the Great War from an international perspective. The first two volumes Britain Goes to War and Britain and the Widening War made this stimulating new writing accessible to a broad readership and this final volume has the same aim.A group of over twenty expert contributors reconsider the military reasons for the outcome of the fighting and look at the consequences for the principal nations involved. They explore the way the war and the peace settlement shaped the twentieth century and had an enduring impact within Europe and beyond.

The Story of Coventry traces the evolution of the city, from the myths of Godiva, through to the issues, challenges and opportunities facing it in the twenty-first century. Exploring Coventry's heritage through records, architectural developments and anecdotes, it reveals a fascinating and much misunderstood city, whose history is often overshadowed by its bombing during the Second World War. Peter Walters, well known for his numerous newspaper features and active role in local heritage, shows that there is a great deal more to the history of Coventry than first meets the eye. This beautifully illustrated text will delight both residents and visitors alike.