The Midlands has long been the source of almost everything that is good about English – and, indeed, world – culture and history

1. Gravity

Photograph: The Gallery Collection/Corbis

Midlanders are very grounded people, so it should come as little surprise that it was a Midlander – Sir Isaac Newton – who discovered gravity. The Royal Society named the former Grantham schoolboy as the most influential scientist of all time. Beat that, smarty-pants London!

2. Creswell Crags

Photograph: Don McPhee for the Guardian

Did you know that the Midlands is home to what archaeologists have dubbed "the Sistine Chapel of the ice age"? That's right: at Creswell Crags, a limestone gorge on the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border, ice age Midlanders invented Britart.

3. Mercians

Photograph: David Jones/PA

The recent recovery of the Staffordshire Hoard from a field in Hammerwich has provided a useful reminder that Anglo-Saxon Mercia (the Midlands) was politically, culturally and militarily far superior to Northumbria (the north) and Wessex (the south).

4. The US

Photograph: John Foxx/Getty Images/Stockbyte Silver

The idea of the US was first cooked up in North Notts by a group of religious separatists who would eventually set sail for America on the Mayflower. Those first persecution-fleeing Midlanders invented the concept of the Land of the Free.

5. The Great Reform Act

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The 1832 Great Reform Act laid the foundations of our modern electoral system. And it was basically all Brum's doing. As Lord Durham declared: "The country owed Reform to Birmingham, and its salvation from revolution."

6. Gary Lineker

Photograph: Andy Paradise/Rex Features

All Midlanders are nice people – that's a scientifically proven fact – but that doesn't stop them being high achievers. The sporting world's Mr Nice, Gary Lineker, is a Leicester lad. The Match of the Day host isn't above poking fun at himself: since 1995 he's played an arch-villain in advertising campaigns for Walkers crisps, also from Leicester.

7. Rebecca Adlington

Photograph: Paul Childs/Action Images

Midlanders are also modest, almost to a fault. Can you think of a more self-deprecating sporting over-achiever than Mansfield-born swimmer Rebecca Adlington? She's England's most decorated female Olympian ever.

8. The Salvation Army

Photograph: Alamy

The East Midlands has been home to a long line of spiritual radicals, including William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army and a notable equal-opportunities employer. "My best men are women!" he declared with winning Midland eccentricity.

9. Stilton

Photograph: Foodstock/Alamy

The distinctive blue-veined cheese may take its name from a village in Cambridgeshire, but it's a strictly Midland phenomenon – by law it can only be produced in Leicestershire, Derbyshire or Nottinghamshire using local cow's milk.

10. Mass tourism

Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Leicester cabinetmaker Thomas Cook effectively invented mass tourism in the 1840s. Note that there is very little tourism, never mind mass tourism, to the Midlands.

11. Philip Larkin

Photograph: Jane Bown

When Hull was announced as the 2017 Capital of Culture, the BBC noted that the East Yorkshire town is principally "known for being the home of poet Philip Larkin". Actually, Larkin was a Midlander: he's more properly known as the "Bard of Coventry".

12. Hamlet

Photograph: Simon Annand /Young Vic

The most famous character in stage history is known to many as Hamlet the Dane, but Hamlet the Midlander would be more accurate. Shakespeare came from Stratford-upon-Avon and had a son called Hamnet – a name that was often spelled "Hamlet" in contemporary documents.

13. Land of Hope and Glory

Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images

According to a 2006 survey, the centrepiece of the Last Night of the Proms would be the popular choice for a specifically English national anthem. Naturally, the music was written by a Midlander – Edward Elgar.

14. Dr Samuel Johnson

Photograph: The Gallery Collection/Corbis

Though he famously declared "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life", Dr J was also immensely proud of his Midland roots, hailing his native Lichfield the "city of pPhilosophers".

15. Paul Smith

Photograph: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

Midlanders are better dressed than other Britons: from Margaret Thatcher to Noddy Holder, the region has been rich in fashion icons. It comes as no surprise, then, that Britain's finest menswear designer, Paul Smith, should come from Nottingham.

16. Robbie Williams

Photograph: David M Benett/Getty Images

Why has Robbie Williams always been a bit of a square peg in a round hole in Take That? Because he's a Midlander and the other four are northerners. Inevitably, it's "Sir" Gary Barlow – the really northern one – who's being groomed for the Establishment.

17. 2 Tone

Photograph: Ray Stevenson/Rex Features

One of the best things to emerge from the punk movement – and the best thing, musically speaking, ever to emerge from Coventry – was the ska revival, or 2 Tone. Avoid: anything by Madness – they're not 2 Tone, they're Too Cockney.

18. Balti

Photograph: Alamy

Yorkshire has its pudding, Lancashire has its hotpot, but Birmingham is home to the much more cutting-edge balti, a type of curry served in a pressed-steel, wok-like "balti dish". For best results, follow your balti with a quintessentially Midland cheese course of stilton and Walkers crisps.

19. Tony Hancock

Photograph: Baron/Getty Images

Manchester sometimes likes to style itself the comedy capital but Birmingham is the nation's true hub of humour. A 2002 BBC poll declared Brummie Tony Hancock the greatest British comedian of all time.

20. Mr Darcy

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that a great writer in need of a sexy leading man will look to the Midlands for inspiration: reader, meet Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley, Derbyshire – Midland sex symbol.