Who should be famous?

As an extra question based on recent threads, which Coventrian or person with Cov connections should be famous and aren't? Or maybe deserve more fame? It's always bugged me that to the outside person, Coventry has been sold - down the years - as the City in Shakespeare Country, and a single Blitz that only destroyed the medieval Cathedral Church of St Michaels. Believe me, I used to talk to tourists who spent a morning at Stratford, were rushed for a tour of the Cathedral and, if they were lucky, motor museum, before going onto Warwick Castle in the afternoon. Could we be making more of the characters in our past? Bearing in mind, that a lot of 'Coventry folk', who helped shape our world, had come here from far afield - like Nuneaton, or that London place, or Oop North. And some Cov bods made their fame, fortune or infamy elsewhere.

I'm biased but Coventry has had an extraordinary group of people who captured the vanishing city. In 1792 Thomas Sharp, John Nicholson and George Howlet, Coventry businessmen commissioned Mr Jeayes, also of Coventry to produce paintings and drawings to illustrate their copies of Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire. Those that survive represent some of the oldest images of the city. Dr Nathanial Troughton, a true doctor, saw his city vanishing and sketched as much of his city as possible in his spare time, and also incorporated or copied older works. William George Fretton was a prolific antiquarian, collecting images, notes and plans of the city. Not only that, during his time as a headmaster in the 1860s he sent out some of his pupils to draw various old parts of the city, many of which capture what nobody else bothered to record. Joseph Wingrave, started out as a portrait photographer but in later years he branched out into scenic and domestic photography but more unusually he also captured less photogenic views. Mary Dormer Harris was an outstanding Coventry historian but also had her books illustrated, including one by Albert Chanler in 1911 that captures some rare views. In the early 1990s Sydney Bunney was a trained and excellent artist but worked as a clerk. Using hundreds of small scraps of paper he too recorded his vanishing city, and while Troughton had concentrated on the medieval, Bunney included the Georgian and later buildings that were subsequently destroyed by the war. There are others but these Coventry citizens are a highlight for me because they could see how special and ephemeral the city was and decided to do something about it.

Even some Coventrians also question the phrase, and signage that Coventry is a "City in Shakespeare Country". I understand, but unable to validate, that Shakespere travelled a lot and left his footprint in a great many places, and Coventry was one of those places he has been. If I find that source, or perhaps someone here will know, it can be validated.