It started with lockdown and a broken angel, but Coventry’s year as city of culture is highlighting its reputation for resilience
Shortly before midnight on 23 January 2020, security cameras outside Coventry Cathedral picked up two ghostly figures smashing their way through an angel in the West Screen, one of the city’s best-loved works of art. There was nothing to steal in the cathedral beyond a few pounds in a collection box. But within seconds, one of the 66 angels and saints that had guarded the front entrance since it was consecrated in 1962 had shivered irreparably into pieces.
Coventry is a resilient city, which is used to picking itself up and dusting itself down. When its Daimler factory closed, with the loss of a key local industry, it was commandeered as an arts space; when Ikea more recently shut up shop, it was designated a new home for the art collections of the Arts and British Councils. But the city’s resolve is perhaps most poignantly embodied in the new cathedral itself, which was built alongside the ruins of the old one.