The Media Archive for Central England is the public screen archive for the East and West Midlands. An independent charity and company based at the University of Lincoln, MACE acquires, catalogues, preserves and makes widely available moving image materials that inform our understanding of the diverse cultures and histories of communities between the Lincolnshire coast and the Welsh border.
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Whitwell Twinned with Paris
The Morris dancers give way to the Can-Can as tiny Whitwell in Rutland aims high and twins itself with Paris.
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Overview
The then recently opened Rutland Water could never be compared to the magnificent River Seine and its population is hardly on a par with the great French city but ambitious Whitwell village in Rutland has still gone ahead and twinned itself with Paris. With all the clichés of France on show from the Citroen car, onions, to Can-Can girls and some dodgy accents this 'twinning' appears to be a product of the saloon bar rather than the international diplomacy table.
The stunt began when the locals of the Noel Arms wrote to the then Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac with an offer of twinning with an unreasonably tight deadline for a reply. When the reply was not forthcoming the villagers declared themselves twinned. Two years after that success they declared they were also twinned with Bombay and then set their sights on Hong Kong.
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