Birmingham Top Hats and Tales
Kevin Thomas SpeakerNet Sponsor
- Region:
- West Midlands
- Notice Period:
- Regular (more than one month's notice)
- Type:
- Professional
- Fee:
- Paid: £75
- Category:
- History
- Updated:
- 30th July 2025
- Tagged:
- Birmingham | Victorian | Stories | History
Top Hats and Tales: Curious Lives in Victorian Birmingham
Step into the smoke and splendour of Victorian Birmingham — a city of invention, ambition, and the downright bizarre. In this illustrated talk, based on my popular walking tour, we’ll meet mad hatters, women wrestlers, Victorian opticians, and shadowy figures who roamed the foggy streets by gaslight.
Expect stories of strange cures, social climbing, and scandal in a city bursting at the seams with change. This isn’t the polite parlour-room version of history — it’s the backstreet drama of a city in top hats and turmoil.
Told with artefacts, photographs, and plenty of character.
Views: 22 | Enquiries: 0About Kevin Thomas
Looking for a talk that’s equal parts eye-opening, entertaining, and just a little bit eccentric? Kevin Thomas is an award-winning guide and the man behind some of Birmingham’s most popular and peculiar walking tours. With 40 years' experience as an architectural photographer and designer, Kevin brings buildings to life and lifts the lid on the stories they’ve been hiding. His walking tours have been featured in The Times and described as “witty, weird, and wonderfully well-researched.” Kevin is available to give illustrated talks to heritage groups, U3As, WI branches, local history societies and anyone curious about Birmingham’s buried past. Expect juicy tales, forgotten figures, oddball objects, and the kind of facts that leave you saying: “I never knew that!”
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