My PhD research will reflect on the former of these through the portrayal of the latter: by the beginning of the twentieth century, Birmingham was a veritable treasure trove of commemoration with a wealth of statues, monuments, architecture, streets-names and other memorials all intended to pay tribute to ‘the great and the good’ of Birmingham. My work will seek to identify the possibly less-than-altruistic motives behind these often grand gestures and consider what they reveal about the society, economy, culture and politics of nineteenth-century Birmingham.