Welcome to the UK’s city of culture – with diversity centre-stage

Coventry can often seem forgotten by tourism and the arts but its past is culturally rich and so is its future, reports David Lister

The choir performs during a Ghosts in the Ruins dress rehearsal at Coventry cathedral (Getty)

Among the most powerful images of the destruction caused by the Second World War are the ruins of the bombed Coventry cathedral and the photographs of King George VI wandering around them. When the cathedral was rebuilt and consecrated in 1962, it was decided to mark the reopening with culture, and so Benjamin Britten composed his “War Requiem” for the occasion, and it was premiered there.

Of course, by then there was another war, the Cold War, and one of the sopranos that Britten had chosen for the occasion was not allowed to leave the Soviet Union to perform. But the performance, sombre yet dramatic, was the start of Coventry’s desire to look forward in hope and embrace harmony and unity among those affected by war.

The city, which created the concept of “twinning” with places abroad, has a record number of 26 twin cities around the world, and, significantly, chose its partners carefully to emphasise the need for harmony and understanding. Among its twins are Dresden, Stalingrad (now Volgograd) and Nagasaki, all, like Coventry, were victims of destruction.