Lichfield on the main routes from London to the north-west and Birmingham to the north-east. It also became a centre of great intellectual activity, being the home of many famous people including Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward; this prompted Johnson's remark that Lichfield was "a city of philosophers". In the 1720s Daniel Defoe described Lichfield as 'a fine, neat, well-built, and indifferent large city', the principal town in the region after Chester. During the late 18th and early 19th century much of the medieval city was rebuilt with the red-brick Georgian style buildings still to be seen
The Lichfield Festival scope which saw events held at multiple venues around the city and running for four days. The 2010 event encompassed a week for the first time and included talks from comedian Jo Brand, Labour politicians Tony Benn and Roy Hattersley, actor Ron Moody and the team behind the BBC's smash-hit adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford Novels. The first instance of a local church being used as a concert venue for the Lichfield Festival occurred in 1992, when St. John's Hospital Chapel in Lichfield and St. Matthew's Hospital Chapel in Burntwood were added to the roster. From 1997–2007 the events in