Bristol

Nicholas Nickleby contains a substantial Bristol episode that Dickens based on specific places he had visited. The Theatre Royal, the Clifton hotels and the characters behind the characters.

Brunel first came to Bristol aged 27 to supervise the Clifton Bridge design competition. He kept coming back for the rest of his life. Bristol was where his ambitions found their fullest expression.

Blue Lines came out in 1991 and sounded like nothing else. The Wild Bunch had been building towards it since the early 1980s in a community centre in St Pauls.

The first St Pauls Carnival took place in 1968, organised by a community that was determined to celebrate itself publicly. It has been running ever since, through riots, underfunding, and a pandemic.

On 7 June 2020, a crowd pulled down a statue that had stood in Bristol for 125 years. The argument about Colston had been going on for decades before that afternoon.

In April 1963 the Bristol Omnibus Company openly refused to employ Black workers. By August they had backed down. What happened in between changed British race relations law.

In 1809 Bristol cut a new channel for the Avon and impounded the old one. The result was the floating harbour - tidal no more, navigable always - and a port that lasted 150 years.

He went to school in Bristol. His early work was in Easton and Stokes Croft. The Mild Mild West has been on the same wall since 1999. Almost everything else is contested.