Birmingham (ⁱ/ˈbɜrmɪŋəm/ BUR-ming-əm, locally /ˈbɜrmɪŋɡəm/ BUR-ming-gəm) is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 (2010 estimate), and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a population of 2,284,093 (2001 census). Birmingham's metropolitan area is also the United Kingdom's second most populous with a population of 3,683,000.

A medium-sized market town during the medieval period, Birmingham grew to international prominence in the 18th century at the heart of the Midlands Enlightenment and subsequent Industrial Revolution, which saw the town at the forefront of worldwide developments in science, technology and economic organisation, producing a series of innovations that laid many of the foundations of modern industrial society. By 1791 it was being hailed as "the first manufacturing town in the world". Birmingham's distinctive economic profile, with thousands of small workshops practising a wide variety of specialised and highly-skilled trades, encouraged exceptional levels of creativity and innovation and provided a diverse and resilient economic base for industrial prosperity that was to last into the final quarter of the 20th century. Its resulting high level of social mobility also fostered a culture of broad-based political radicalism, that under leaders from Thomas Attwood to Joseph Chamberlain was to give it a political influence unparalleled in Britain outside London and a pivotal role in the development of British democracy.

Steven Emerson, is an American journalist and author, who writes about national security, terrorism, and Islamic extremism.

Emerson is the author of six books, and co-author of two more. His television documentary Jihad in America won the 1994 George Polk Award for best Television Documentary, and top prize for best investigative reporting from Investigative Reporters and Editors. He is also the Executive Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), a data-gathering center on Islamist groups. Emerson frequently testifies before Congressional committees on al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

Emerson received a Bachelors of Arts from Brown University in 1976, and a Master of Arts in sociology in 1977.

He went to Washington, D.C., in 1977 with the intention of putting off his law school studies for a year. He worked on staff as an investigator for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee until 1982, and as an executive assistant to Democratic Senator Frank Church of Idaho.

Amanda Meta Marshall (born August 29, 1972, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian pop-rock singer.

She grew up in Toronto in a biracial family, with a White Canadian father and a Black Trinidadian mother. In several of her songs, Marshall has reflected on her racial identity "as a woman who looks white but is also half-black".

Marshall studied music extensively during her childhood, including at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. While performing on the Queen Street West bar scene in her teens, she met guitarist Jeff Healey, who was struck by her powerful voice and took her on tour.

Marshall signed a recording contract with Metalblade Records in 1991, but both parties agreed that they were not a good fit and went their separate ways. In 1994, Marshall signed to Epic Records, and contributed to the Neil Young tribute album Borrowed Tunes: A Tribute to Neil Young the same year. Her debut album Amanda Marshall was released the following year in 1995. The album was a major success in Canada, generating a great deal of airplay and spawning six Top 40 hits -- "Let It Rain", "Beautiful Goodbye", "Dark Horse", "Fall From Grace", "Sitting on Top of the World", and "Birmingham", her most successful hit in Canada and the only song to reach the US charts.

Adam Mitchel Lambert (born January 29, 1982) is an American singer-songwriter and stage actor. Born in Indianapolis but raised in San Diego, Lambert had dreamed of becoming a performer after appearing in numerous amateur productions in his childhood and adolescence. His passion overtook him when deciding to drop out of college, pursue his career, and perform in various professional theatrical productions across the world.

Lambert came to prominence following his appearance on the eighth season of American Idol. Although he was runner-up, Lambert launched a music career with the release of his debut studio album For Your Entertainment (2009) after signing with 19 in a joint venture with RCA. Debuting at number three on the Billboard 200, selling 198,000 copies in the U.S. in its first week, and reaching the top 10 in several countries worldwide, the album subsequently achieved international success with its singles "For Your Entertainment", "Whataya Want from Me" and "If I Had You". Soon after, he embarked on his first headlining worldwide concert tour, Glam Nation, making him the only American Idol contestant to do so in the year following his Idol season. The tour was followed by two live releases: an extended play entitled Acoustic Live! (2010), and a live CD/DVD Glam Nation Live (2011), which debuted at number one on the SoundScan Music Video chart. Lambert took executive producer credit and was a principal writer on his second studio album, Trespassing, which was released to critical acclaim on May 15, 2012.Trespassing made its debut in the number one spot on the Billboard 200 album chart, also topping the Billboard Digital Albums Chart and Canada's Digital Albums Chart.With this accomplishment, Lambert makes music history as the first openly gay artist to achieve the top charting position.

Penny Woolcock (born January 1, 1950, in Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a British filmmaker, opera director, and screenwriter. She was raised in a British community in Montevideo, speaking English and going to English schools. Her father, an accountant, had wanted to be a writer.

In 1967, she founded a radical theatre group and was briefly arrested; her parents wanted to send her to Europe for safety. Instead, she fled to Spain with a man from the theater group and had a baby in Barcelona.

In 1970 she moved to England as a single mother. She did factory work and other jobs. In her thirties she enrolled in a filmmakers' workshop, borrowed film-making equipment, and sold the resulting feature to BBC Channel 4. She then was hired as a director and editor of a current-affairs program originating in Newcastle. From there, she went on to feature-making. Her first feature as a writer and director was Women in Tropical Places in 1989. Since then she has directed and/or written seven films. She adapted and directed Macbeth on the Estate in 1997.