BLACK COUNTRY GETS ROUGH PRESS

12-05-2008

While Birmingham has been preening itself over favourable comments made in the latest edition of the Rough Guide to England, the Black Country has – literally – been written off.

An article in last week’s Black Country editions of the Express and Star reveals that a new 1,015 page edition of the respected Rough Guide To England dismisses the entire Black Country region as:

"that knot of industrial towns clinging to the western side of Birmingham".

The Express and Star continues:

"Before going on to wax lyrical about the likes of Stratford-upon-Avon, the Guide says: "This area has found it difficult to re-route itself through the maze of post-industrialisation and more amply fulfils the negative stereotypes once attached to Birmingham."

By contrast the guide devotes 48 pages to The Lake District, an impressive 55 pages to the Costwolds and even Birmingham gets 11 pages with a glowing description of the city’s regeneration.

But a glance at the index gives no indication that Wolverhampton, Walsall or Dudley even exist. There is no mention of the Black Country Living Museum or Dudley Zoo and Castle, home to some of the world’s biggest, rarest and most exotic creatures.

"Nor do Dudley's 18th-century Himley Hall with its 180 acres of grounds designed by Capability Brown or Walsall's renowned Leather Museum get a look in".

How disappointing that even respected publications like the Rough Guide allow themselves to dismiss a huge area of important industrial heritage and rich culture in such a demeaning and dismissive way.

Maybe the editors of the Rough Guide ain't so rough after all?

Maybe the original vision of Rough Guide founder Mark Ellingham went with him when he left the company last year? A vision of creating an alternative type of travel guide to the bland, commercialized or over-intellectualised publications that were only available to him as traveling student a couple of decades ago.

Clearly the objectives and the audience of the so-called Rough Guides has changed completely over the years. Authored by condescending middle class intellectuals on eternal gap years, the current writers certainly remain keen to out-impress one another with their 'slumming-it' anecdotes about Marakesh, Istanbul and the Australian Outback, but when it comes to the realities of working class life in Britain they are completely unable to hack it.

Perhaps because there’s no British Consulate to run to when the going really does get rough?

Oh yes, the Rough Guiders can sniff out the cheapest beach based cocktail bar on Lesbos, but ask them to find a Banks’s pub in Cradley Heath and they’re up the cut without a paddle.

Best traditional mamma’s home made pizza café in the Sardinian foothills? Not a problem when you’ve got an American Express card in your ruck-sack. Cup of tay and a bacon sarnie in Upper Gornal? So far out of their comfort zones it’s like asking them to write a guide to nude beaches in North Eastern Siberia.

Rough Guide bloody failures if you ask me and it does make you wonder just who the Rough Guides are written for these days doesn’t it?

With such a fantastic opportunity to stray from the well-trodden tourist path of 10 million other contemporary tourist guides to England, to really tune into the rich working class culture of Britain, instead the authors of Rough Guide England have sunk into the prevailing stereotypes and easy generalisations that betray either their own privileged backgrounds or their complete lack of originality as researchers.

Yes, all West Midlanders will agree that Stratford is a fantastic place to punt along the river on a midsummer’s afternoon in late August followed by an evening at the theatre, but was this really a gap in our knowledge that only the Rough Guide can fill?

Far from investigating the hidden gems and back roads of our maligned little corner of planet earth, the authors of Rough Guide have become as dismissive and culturally elitist as the travel writers who originally inspired Ellingham to set up this alternative genre in the first place.

As Brum based author David Lodge says of the fictional city of Rummidge in his novel Nice Work :

"environmentally, it has nice and nasty parts, and the ugliness of the nasty parts is a product of the wealth-creating work that goes on there. The amenities of the university campus are indirectly funded by dirty factories on the other side of the city"

Maybe the Rough Guide should just re-brand itself …the Soft Guide?

Pete Millington writes the excellent Spaghetti Gazetti blog http://www.spaghettigazetti.com/