IV.

Education and Culture

The University of Warwick is in fact in Coventry in the West Midlands. Rugby School (founded 1567) is one of the most famous of English public schools, and is also where rugby football was invented. It is pre-dated by Warwick School, also a public school, which was founded in 914. The county's best-known authors are Walter Savage Landor, born in Warwick in 1775, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) born a short distance from Nuneaton, in 1819, and the poet Rupert Brooke, born in Rugby in 1887. Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes is set in Rugby School, during the time when the celebrated Dr Thomas Arnold was headmaster. Warwickshire County Cricket Club is one of the country's leading cricket teams, although its main ground at Edgbaston, also used for Test matches, is in Birmingham in the West Midlands. There is racecourse at Warwick.