About Bristol

Situated in the West of England, on the borders of the counties of Somerset and Gloucestershire, Bristol is a city of about 250,000 people (most of whom walk past my flat at 1 a.m. on a Sunday morning). It was created a city and county in it's own right in 1373 and, apart from a brief dalliance with the County of Avon, remains that way today.

With over a thousand years of history behind it, Bristol is firmly a part of England's heritage. We had a castle (knocked down by Oliver Cromwell with a blatant disregard for the needs of the tourist industry), were beseiged by everyone in both Civil Wars, and discovered America (though we didn't tell anyone for a while). We have traded everywhere with everyone (though we also shifted a large mass of people from one side of the Atlantic to the other in the process).

Despite all that tradition, Bristol today is very much a forward-looking city. We produce large parts of Concorde and the Airbus (wings and engines a speciality), we have one of the largest Hewlett-Packard sites outside of California, and we have given the world Portishead, Massive Attack, and Tricky.

On the pages that follow, I have dealt with various aspects of Bristol in some depth. Use the menu on the left to have a click around...

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