History UsefulNotes / TheMidlands

* ''Literature/TomBrownsSchooldays'' is set in Rugby School (where the sport was also born, at least according to the popular legend), and the quasi-spinoff ''{{Literature/Flashman}}'' stars a character from the book.

* FormulaOne champion Nigel Mansell sounds unmistakably like a midlander. As noted on the trope page fellow brummie Jasper Carrott made fun of his lack of personality: "Potentially, he is the most exciting man on the Earth..." (beat) "... until he speaks".

The Midlands is usually considered to contain the historic counties of Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbsyhire. Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Gloucestershire and Huntingdonshire are occasionally considered part of the Midlands but fall outside the regions of the West Midlands or the East Midlands and are more often considered parts of UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry, UsefulNotes/EastAnglia or the UsefulNotes/HomeCounties. Lincolnshire is part of the East Midlands region but its northern part falls inside the Yorkshire and Humber region and the county is often excluded from being part of the Midlands because of its large coastline.

* ''DeadMansShoes'' is filmed and set in Matlock in Derbyshire.

* One or two vermin in the ''{{Redwall}}'' series have a noticeable Brummie FunetikAksent, as opposed to the usual generic low-class thug or TalkLikeAPirate vermin dialects.

* J.R.R. Tolkien stated that in TheLordOfTheRings, he based the Shire (and the Hobbit society there) on his childhood home in Birmingham.

* Richard Hammond of ''TopGear'', who is constantly cast as a sort of country bumpkin by co-presenter Jeremy Clarkson for that very reason.

* Eric Idle's ''RutlandWeekendTelevision'', the joke being that Rutland, the least-populous of all counties in England, would have its own TV station, and so be extremely low-budget.

* ''TheArchers'' is set in a ([[{{Barsetshire}} fictional]]) West Midlands county called Borsetshire, whose inhabitants have Dorset and/or Somerset accents for no adequately explained reason. Presumably someone from the casting department who's never been to either region just went for "generic country bumpkin" and nobody bothered to correct them.

* LennyHenry
* Thom Yorke of Radiohead and Creator/AlanMoore are both natives of the Midlands county of Northamptonshire. Also Raging Speedhorn, but we try not to talk about that too loudly.

** And speaking of the Rum Runner -- two other bands from Birmingham, Music/DexysMidnightRunners ("Come on Eileen") and {{UB40}} ("Red Red Wine") used the practice space above the club to rehearse.

* ''Literature/TomBrownsSchooldays'' is set in Rugby School (where the sport was also born, at least according to the popular legend), and the quasi-spinoff ''{{Flashman}}'' stars a character from the book.

The Midlands is usually considered to contain the historic counties of Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbsyhire. Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Gloucestershire and Huntingdonshire are occasionally considered part of the Midlands but fall outside the regions of the West Midlands or the East Midlands and are more often considered parts of UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry, UsefulNotes/EastAnglia or the UsefulNotes/HomeCounties. Lincolnshire is part of the East Midlands region but it's northern part falls inside the Yorkshire and Humber region and the county is often excluded from being part of the Midlands because of it's large coastline.

By a quirk of geography, the Midlands are actually slanted so "the North West" region is actually further south than the centre of the East Midlands.[[note]]Debate persists as to whether most of Cheshire, outside its northern industrialised belt, properly belongs in the Midlands. Parts of northern Derbyshire, esoecially Buxton and Glossop, are considered to be just about part of the north. See [[OopNorth]] for further details.[[/note]]

By a quirk of geography, the Midlands are actually slanted so "the North West" region is actually further south than the centre of the East Midlands.

The cities of the Midlands are noted for having a larger than usual percentage of ethnic minorities, particularly Leicester, where the percentage of minorities now outweighs the white ethnic Englishmen ''and nobody even cares''.

The cities of the Midlands are noted for having a larger than usual percentage of ethnic minorities, particularly Leicester, where the percentage of minorities now outweighs the white ethnic Englishmen.

The cities of the Midlands are noted for having a larger than usual percentage of ethnic minorities, particularly Leicestershire, where the percentage of minorities now outweighs the white ethnic Englishmen. It has become a matter of regional pride, and making a racist comment against immigrants is just as likely to get you punched even in a room filled entirely with ethnic Englishmen - if you can find such a thing in the Midlands.

Midlanders are often thought of as being stupid, possibly due to most accents being non-rhotic with vowels so sloppy that they can successfully drag on any nearby constanants too. This results in the Midlands Drawl, which involves either taking as long as you can to say as little as you can, or saying as much as you can as slowly as you can. [[SweetHomeMidlands The Black Country]] accent makes people assume 'thickie' whereas a Staffordshire accent is more generic. An East Midlands accent actually sounds much like OopNorth to the untrained ear.

The cities of the Midlands are noted for having a larger than usual percentage of ethnic minorities, particularly [[SweetHomeMidlands Birmingham]] and Leicester, and with this fact being a matter of regional pride, making a racist comment against immigrants is just as likely to get you punched even in a room filled entirely with ethnic Englishmen - if you can find such a thing in the Midlands.

** Of course, what the film version controversially omitted for time was one of Tolkien's major points in the book: when the Hobbits return to the Shire after the war, they find that the Industrial Revolution has swept through it, factories have sprouted up everywhere, and all the forests have been cut down. The Shire was taken over by Frodo's evil cousin Lotho using hired mercenaries, and they quickly set about trying to industrialize everything for profit...or to make it a world power...or something. Tolkien usually strongly argued against any allegorical readings of his work (even really strong reflections about the Great War which are kind of obvious), but on this one point, he openly admitted that "the Scouring of the Shire" was his commentary on what happened to the Midlands in the 20th century. Tolkien grew up in the Midlands around the turn of the century, which it was this bucolic Shire-like lush green fairy-tale-perfect place, then he left to fight in the horror of World War I, all but one of his close personal friends were killed in action, and when he returned home to Birmingham, the whole place had industrialized, factories were everywhere and choking it with pollution, and the Midlands he grew up in were utterly swept aside. "Mordor" for Tolkien (or more probably "Isengard") was, in many ways, urban sprawl.

The Midlands is usually considered to contain the historic counties of Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbsyhire. Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Gloucestershire and Huntingdonshire are occassionally considered part of the Midlands but fall outside the regions of the West Midlands or the East Midlands and are more often considered parts of TheWestCountry, EastAnglia or the HomeCounties. Lincolnshire is part of the East Midlands region but it's northern part falls inside the Yorkshire and Humber region and the county is often excluded from being part of the Midlands because of it's large coastline.

* Sibling actors Michael Socha (Tom in ''Series/BeingHuman'') and Lauren Socha (Kelly in ''Series/Misfits'') are from Derbyshire. Notably, they use their natural regional accents in the aforementioned roles, providing rare examples of strong East Midlands dialect/accents in television dramas.

** An amusing side result of this is that "Gamgees" is actually a colloquial term in Birmingham for "cotton bandages" i.e. gauze, because a local cotton company was run by a family named "Gamgee". Tolkien wasn't aware of the reason, he just remembered it as a term from his childhood and then assigned as the character Sam's surname, sort of like "Sam Gauze" (he's this good natured guy who helps out people who are in trouble, sort of like bandages). This even extends to the point that Sam's wife Rosie's surname is "Cotton". Much to Tolkien's surprise, a few years after ''The Lord of the Rings'' was published, he received a letter from a real-life man whose ''actual name'' was "Sam Gamgee". Tolkien wrote him back explaining he never realized "Gamgee" was a real-life surname, he thought it was just a local word from his childhood in the Midlands, though Sam was quite a heroic character so he didn't think it would be too embarrassing. For a while afterwards, Tolkien had the slight fear that one day he'd get a letter from some poor fellow actually named "S. Gollum" as "that would have been more difficult to deal with"

* Thom Yorke of Radiohead and AlanMoore are both natives of the Midlands county of Northamptonshire. Also Raging Speedhorn, but we try not to talk about that too loudly.

* Creator/PaulCornell's ''Wisdom'' and ''[[Comicbook/{{Excalibur}} Captain Britain and MI13]]'' featured a WWII Brummie superhero called [[CaptainGeographic Captain Midlands]].

** And [[Series/DoctorWho Eleventh Doctor]] MattSmith.

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* [[Wrestling/ChrisAdams Pro wrestler "Gentleman" Chris Adams]] was born in Rugby, Warwickshire and usually billed from Stratford-Upon-Avon, also in Warwickshire.