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 was succeeded in Lichfield by Richard Hawley, previously orchestra manager with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO). Philip Glass performed a rare solo piano recital in 2007, while virtuoso double bass player François Rabbath made an extremely rare visit to England to perform at Lichfield in 2006, alongside rising British jazz star Gwilym Simcock, who was an artist-in-residence in the same year. Simcock's 2006 residency also included the first ever non-London performance of the Gwilym Simcock Big Band and a major big band commission entitled The Lichfield Suite, which was subsequently programmed by the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, broadcast on