Bare-Faced Godiva

A bare-faced scheme to attract tourists is Coventry's astute "Lady Godiva Procession & Carnival."

Weeks and months ahead, newspapers all over Great Britain announce that in the quaint, hoary home-town of the real Lady Godiva (died circa 1080), she will ride out again. By a kind of national conspiracy in the mood of Peter Pan, the papers imply that Coventry's new Godiva will ride nude.

Not until the day after she has ridden (barefaced, but clothed from toes to neck in flesh-colored tights, swathed in so much false hair as to be practically invisible) is the nature of the racket publicly revealed.

In Coventry last week Secretary Keith Moulton of the Lady Godiva Procession & Carnival waxed wroth and red in the face. He had just learned that the great cities of Manchester and Shrewsbury are going to hold Lady Godiva processions this summer.

"It was bad enough last summer!" stormed Secretary Moulton, recalling with indignation how the village of Dudley near Coventry had worked the Godiva racket in a small way. "There may possibly be some truth in the story that Lady Godiva rode as far as Dudley, though I doubt it," snapped Mr. Moulton, "but she certainly .did not ride to Manchester [some 100 miles]. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but surely Manchester and Shrewsbury have some historical episode of their own which they could reproduce."

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