ABSTRACT
In his book on Britain and the British Isles Mackinder described Birmingham as the first independent intellectual centre to the north of London. It has certainly differed from others further north in having during the whole period of its miraculous growth since the middle of the eighteenth century been associated with the names of famous men who themselves stood for great ideas. To some few of them it has itself given birth but the most famous have been those whom, like Joseph Priestley, James Watt, John Henry Newman, John Bright, Joseph Chamberlain, Oliver Lodge and Bishop Gore it has known how to attract and to retain as adopted sons. Newman I might have seen if I had gone there seven years earlier, Bright I had heard twice when he visited Glasgow as Lord Rector in 1882, but he too was gone. It was to the last three that the city owed its intellectual distinction in my time.
