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
David Garrick the Jubilee. Garrick would manage the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, until his retirement from management in 1776. In his last years he continued to add roles to his repertoire; Posthumus in "Cymbeline" was among his last famous roles. Shortly before his death he worked on the production of "The Camp" with Sheridan at Drury Lane and caught a very bad cold. "The Camp" was based around the British response to a threatened invasion by France, leading some to jokingly claim that Garrick was the only casualty of the ultimately abandoned invasion. He died less than three years after his retirement,