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Forget the north south divide, what about the \\u2018squeezed middle\\u2019? Tom Sutcliffe and guests discuss the cultural and political status of the country\\u2019s \\u2018second city\\u2019 Birmingham.

The writer Kit de Waal looks back at growing up in the city, caught between three worlds \\u2013 Irish, Caribbean and British \\u2013 in her memoir Without Warning and Only Sometimes. The historian Richard Vinen argues, in his new book Second City, that Birmingham is the overlooked heart of modern Britain, and the remnants of the West Midland\\u2019s Victorian industrial heyday can be glimpsed in the poetry of Liz Berry \\u2013 in The Dereliction and Black Country.

Producer: Katy Hickman