不得不去考文垂的三个理由

前途出国外联部总监、美国哈佛大学人类发展与心理学专业硕士 本文作者 萧明颢

Three reasons to visit Coventry, England: Academic strength, a cathedral in ruins, and the naked lady that inspired a world class chocolatier and introduced us to “peeping Toms”

Everyone has a story to tell, and often, those that are the most interesting are the ones we never even notice, until we take the time to walk around, to explore, to listen, and to reflect.

Coventry, a small, quiet town in the West Midlands of England (think the US Midwest) embodies just this – like the tip of an iceberg, an average person might write-off Coventry as a small and boring English city when compared to its much larger and perhaps flashier and seemingly more historic neighbors like Birmingham, or slightly further neighbor, London. Yet, there’s more than meets the eye here.

Take the obvious: Coventry houses two academic powerhouses - University of Warwick and Coventry University, both ranked in Top 30 out of UK universities, according to the latest Guardian University 2015 rankings. Both universities were founded less 200 years ago – Coventry around 1843, University of Warwick in 1965, and are holding their own against their more senior and much older peer institutions – Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, need I say more?

Second, economically and politically, it is considered an ancient city, predating Birmingham. Starting as a center for the textile/cloth trade, followed by being a major player of watch/clock manufacturing in the UK, and then transitioning to the automotive bicycle, and motorbike industries, perhaps what put Coventry on the global stage and a target for the German Nazis during World War Two was its production of military weapons and instruments and aircraft engine and airplane parts. So much was the concentration of production, that, during the Second World War, Coventry was the victim of the Nazi blitzkrieg (lightning war) suffering a series of air raids by the German Air Force.

The worst and most devastating of these attacks took place November 14, 1940, where the city was bombed beyond recognition, so much so that the Germans coined a term “coventrieren” which means “to flatten”. Most symbolic of this bombing isSt. Michael’s Cathedral.

Built in the fourteenth century, this Gothic-style cathedral church would probably ordinarily looked like many of the famous cathedrals sprinkled around the UK, and sure in Europe. Yet, one look at it, and you can’t do anything, but stare at it.

Left photo: Picture of the cathedral in 1910; Right: Photo taken within days after the 14 November 1910 German “Coventry Blitz”. All that remained of the church was the tower, 90m spire, and outer wall. Photo source: http://www.historiccoventry.co.uk/nowandthen/st-mikes-ruins.php

Turned into a memorial/visitor site as well as having been used as a backdrop for films, the shell of this former grand structure is a living testimony and story of resilience and renewal. The fact that the spire still remains intact rising 90m (295 feet) in the air as the tallest structure in Coventry is unfathomable and moving.

Photos taken during an early morning run – Left: St. Michael’s Cathedral spire (tallest structure in the city of Coventry standing at 95 meters high or 295 feet); Middle: Picture of the ruined shell of the Cathedral; Right: Plaque outside the ruined Cathedral

Finally, I wanted to know WHY there was a statue of a naked woman on top of a horse in the middle of a shopping area in the city center. It turns out that this woman is none other than Lady Godiva herself, the inspiration and brand behind the famous premium chocolatier, Godiva. Unsurprisingly, Lady Godiva and her nakedness had little to do with chocolate at the time of her existence, and the legend is that she rode through the streets of Coventry naked on her horse to overturn oppressing tax laws imposed by her husband are still being disputed. Story has it that her orders to all the townspeople to shut all their windows and doors during her ride were obeyed, except by one...leading to the now commonly practice and phrase, “peeping Tom”.

Left: Statue of Lady Godiva in Coventry (photo source: Wikipedia.org); Right: Godiva Chocolatier company logo (photo source: Wikipedia.org).

Not so boring of a town is it?