If anywhere can be described as the first purely industrial conurbation, it is BIRMINGHAM . Unlike the more specialist industrial towns that grew up across the north and Midlands, "Brum" - and its "Brummies" - turned its hand to every kind of manufacturing, gaining the epithet "the city of 1001 trades". It was here that the pioneers of the Industrial Revolution - James Watt, Matthew Boulton, William Murdock, Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Priestley and Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) - formed the Lunar Society , a melting-pot of scientific and industrial ideas that spawned the world's first purpose-built factory, the distillation of oxygen, the invention of gas lighting and the mass production of the steam engine. A Midlands market town swiftly mushroomed into the nation's economic dynamo - in the fifty years up to 1830 the population more than trebled to 130,000.

Now the second largest city in Britain, with a population of over one million, Birmingham has long outgrown the squalor and misery of its boom years and today its industrial supremacy is recalled in a crop of excellent heritage museums and an extensive network of canals. It also boasts a thoroughly multiracial population that makes this one of Britain's most cosmopolitan cities. The shift to a post-manufacturing economy is symbolized by the new Convention Centre and by the enormous National Exhibition Centre (NEC) on the outskirts, while Birmingham's cultural initiatives - enticing a division of the Royal Ballet to take up residence here, and building a fabulous new concert hall for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra - are first rate. Nonetheless, there's no pretending that Birmingham is packed with interesting sights - it isn't, though - along with its first-rate restaurant scene and nightlife - it's well worth a day or two - at least