a consequent merging of dialects. Coventry and Birmingham accents Phonetically the accent of Coventry, like the perhaps better known accent of Birmingham, is similar to Northern English with respect to its system of short vowels. For example, it lacks the BATH/TRAP (Cov. /baθ/, Southern /bɑːθ/) and FOOT/STRUT (Cov. /strʊt/, Southern /strʌt/) splits. Yet the longer vowels in the accent also contain traces of Estuary English such as a partial implementation of the London diphthong shift, increasingly so amongst the young since 1950. We also see other Estuary English features, such as a /l/-vocalisation whereby words such as 'milk' come to be pronounced as /mɪʊk/. However, the distinction between Coventry and Birmingham accents is often overlooked. Certain features of the Birmingham accent (e.g. occasional tapping of prevocalic /r/ in words such as 'crack') stop starkly as one moves beyond Solihull in the general direction of Coventry, a possible approximation of the 'Arden Forest' divide perhaps. In any case, Coventry sits right at a dialectal crossroads, very close to isoglosses that generally delineate 'Northern' and 'Southern' dialects, exhibiting features from both sides of the divide. Coventry accent on television The BBC's 2009 documentary The Bombing of Coventry contained interviews with Coventrians. Actress Becci Gemmell, played Coventry character Joyce in the BBC drama Land Girls. Honours A minor planet, 3009 Coventry, discovered by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh in 1973, is named after the city. Education Universities and further education colleges Coventry has two universities; Coventry University is situated on a modern city centre campus while the University of Warwick lies to the south of the city centre. The University of Warwick is one of only five universities never to have been rated outside the top ten in terms of teaching excellence and research and is a member of the prestigious Russell Group. The university won the BBC TV University Challenge trophy in April 2007 and April 2021. Coventry University is one of only a handful of universities to run a degree course in automotive design, which is in its Coventry School of Art and Design. Coventry also has three further education colleges within city boundaries, City College, Henley College and Hereward College. Schools Many of the secondary schools in and around Coventry are specialist colleges, such as Finham Park School, which is a mathematics and IT college, a teacher training school and the only school in Coventry to offer studying the International