"you were sent to Coventry"

The origins of this phrase aren't really known, although it is quite probable that events in Coventry in the English Civil War in the 1640s play a part.

For those of you - whomever you might be - not familiar with the UK, Britain and British geography, Coventry is an industrial city in Warwickshire, England. (Yes, THAT Warwickshire)

Home to two lovely cathedrals (one destroyed by visitors from Germany in 1941) Coventry is also the ancestral birthplace to Jaguar Cars and of course Lady Godiva.

Moving on . . .

In the 17th century, when this phrase is alledged to have originated, Coventry was a rather small town, little more than a walled village actually.

It has been suggested that the phrase, although we now use it in an allusory sense, originated from people actually being sent there.

The story - and it is no more than that - is that Oliver Cromwell sent a group of Royalist soldiers to be imprisoned in Coventry, around 1648. The locals, who were parliamentary supporters, shunned them and refused to consort with them.

"Bastards"

This phrase ("sent to Coventry") was common in industrial disputes in Britain in the mid-twentieth century. Anyone who was considered to be unsupportive of the workforce was in danger of finding that his workmates refused to acknowledge his existence.

- Placing them in a cell of silence as it were -

Co-incidentally this (sending folk to Coventry) was centred on the highly unionized car industry and especially British Leyland, which was largely based in Coventry.

That gave rise to people who had in fact lived and worked in Coventry all their life being sent there figuratively by their workmates.

(An illustrative example of this - and a heck of a Peter Sellers movie by the way - is "I'm all right Jack" filmed in 1958)

And now you know - so "off to Coventry" with you!

Yesterday, the annual flight of WWll 'warbirds' was in the Bay Area and feeling peculiarly "touristy" She wanted to "go see" and so we did, this is the b-24 'Mitchell' light bomber