This short history of the town has been compiled for A Town Called by Nick Hudson, a man who first came to Tamworth with his parents from nearby Nuneaton in the early 1960s to sample the delights of the old open-air baths on the Castle Pleasure Grounds.

He joined hundreds of Midland families who enjoyed the simple weekend pleasures walking down the steps into the lido’s freezing-cold waters to splash about on what always seemed a sunny day in one of the most delightful park settings imaginable. The changing rooms were basic, but the ice cream always a welcome treat (the baths remain under the play area to this day).

Next time he visited the town it was as a district reporter for the Birmingham Evening Mail in Bolebridge Street (the offices are now an estate agent’s office) when it was going through expansion growing pains under the Phil Dix-led Labour borough council who pulled down the town’s ancient buildings – but replaced them with a soul and a vibrant future based on its population.

Over the next seven years, through the Seventies, he chronicled the civic mud-slinging between political opponents on three sides – Labour, Tory and Ratepayer members (Tamworth having been the first town in the country to have a Ratepayer-led council).

He switched from the Mail to the town’s No 1 newspaper bible – the 140-year-old Herald – before editing the upstart, the free Tamworth Trader, which was started by Midlands Today newsman Tom Coyne and later controlled by newspaper baron Lionel Pickering who went on to become chairman of Derby County FC.

Nick later returned as that publication’s general manager before a lifelong media career took him to London, Manchester, St Austell, Canterbury, Glasgow, Swansea, then spells in Spain and North Cyprus - editing regional and national newspapers along the way and looking after press and showbiz agencies.

Today he is Harlaston-based as the director of press and pr for Tamworth businesswoman Sue Arnold’s Haselour House Media with a new challenge as the owner of the Heart of England International Film Festival – the biggest movie-making event of its kind in the UK – which has made its base in Tamworth, thanks to the unstinting support of a far-sighted local authority and like-minded local business sponsors.

Here is the Tamworth story – a capital place to be.