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 Great Garrick their president, Picard (Melville Cooper), decide to make him an object of public ridicule. They take over a wayside inn where he will be staying, and Beaumarchais devises a plot intended to humiliate Garrick by frightening him into returning to England. On his way to Paris, Garrick is met by Jean Cabot (Etienne Girardot), an admirer who works as a Comédie-Française prompter. Cabot warns the actor about the plot and advises him to travel straight to Paris, but Garrick decides to continue on to the inn and play along with French actors, despite the misgivings of his servant Tubby (Edward