Thurmaston is a village and civil parish in Leicestershire, located within the Borough of Charnwood. At the 2011 census, it had a population of 9,668, it is situated four miles north of the city centre of Leicester and lies just outside the A563, Leicester's outer ring road. Thurmaston is bounded to the west by Watermead Country Park, to the north by Syston and to the east by Barkby and Barkby Thorpe. South of Thurmaston is the boundaries of the Leicester urban area. Rushey Mead was part of the Thurmaston parish in the 19th century, before becoming a Thurmaston Urban District in 1894. In 1935, the district was annexed to the city of Leicester where it took its modern-day name of Rushey Mead. Thurmaston is split in two by the A607 dual carriageway. To the east of the road is the residential, newer part of Thurmaston. To the west is the main village on Melton Road, which stands on the old Fosse Way, the historic road built by the Romans. Thurmaston lies on the eastern banks of the River Soar, two marinas are located there, one of, a boat-yard, numerous mooring sites.

These lead to the Watermead Country Park, a purpose-built nature reserve. The Midland Main Line runs through the eastern half of the village. Taylorcraft Aeroplanes Ltd. a subsidiary based in Thurmaston, developed the Taylorcraft Model'D' and the Auster Mk. I through Mk. V, which became the backbone aircraft of the British A. O. P; the local football team, the Thurmaston Magpies, once boasted former England international striker/defender Dion Dublin in its ranks. The Thurmaston depot and headquarters of Arriva Midlands are located on Westmoreland Avenue within the village. Thurmaston contains three Key Stages 1 and 2 primary schools: Bishop Ellis Catholic Primary School Eastfield Primary School Church Hill Infant School and Church Hill C of E Junior SchoolIt contains a Key Stage 3 secondary school, The Roundhill Academy, which takes in students from all the aforementioned schools in the village, as well as schools in the neighbouring town of Syston. Students in Thurmaston aged 14–18 go on to attend Wreake Valley Academy in Syston, the nearest Key Stage 4 college in the Charnwood district.

Thurmaston's prominent location on the edge of Leicester has seen much development in recent years. On 31 March 2003, a large Asda superstore opened on Barkby Thorpe Lane, pushing the nearby Midlands Co-op superstore out of business; the Thurmaston Shopping Centre, featuring a number of retail outlets and restaurants, was built on the site of the old Co-op superstore in 2005. The main village stretch, along Melton Road, has several pubs, takeaway food outlets, convenience stores and various other small retail establishments; the head offices of Arriva Midlands are located in the village, along with Arriva's Thurmaston depot where the majority of their buses and drivers that operate in Leicester are based. As well as many other industrial sites along Melton Road, Thurmaston contains the Earls Way Industrial Estate in the eastern half of the village; the village has its own newspaper, The Thurmaston Times, published bi-monthly. The village has a local history society, Thurmaston Heritage Group, whose members help promote an interest in different aspects of both past and present village life.

One particular activity being pursued by a member of the group is the creation of an online virtual war memorial. The Thurmaston Military Indexes are being compiled to provide a listing of all those from the village who served their country in the Great War of 1914-1918 and the 1939-1945 War; the village has its own community centre, Elizabeth Park Sports and Community Centre, which has become a popular wedding venue and offers a range of sports and facilities including badminton and a state of the art 3G football pitch. The facility was built in 1996, is home to Thurmaston Parish Council Offices. Elizabeth Park is host to many of the local communities sports teams, such as Thurmaston Town FC and Thurmaston Bowls club. Thurmaston is served by a number of bus companies including Arriva Midlands, First Leicester and Centrebus; the nearest railway station is in Syston. Charnwood borough council's local transport plan from 2004 proposed new railway stations to be opened at Thurmaston and East Goscote.

This has since been removed from the local plan. Offranville, Upper Normandy, France Thurmaston Parish Council Thurmaston @ Leicestershire Villages Thurmaston.com

Wilbert Arnold "Bill" Tatum was an American newspaper executive who variously served as the editor, publisher and chief executive officer of the New York Amsterdam News, a weekly newspaper that serves the African-American community of New York City. He was a large investor in the Hooters franchise. Tatum was born in a three-room shack in Durham, North Carolina, the 10th of 13 children, in 1933, he attended Durham's segregated schools. He majored in sociology at Lincoln University, the United States' first degree-granting black university. During the Korean War, he served in the United States Marine Corps as a drill instructor in Japan from 1951 until 1954. After completing his military service, he attended Yale University as a National Urban Fellow. Tatum was awarded a master's degree from Occidental College, where he majored in urban studies. Tatum spent 13 years working as a mayoral appointee in the government of New York City, during the John Lindsay and Abraham Beame administrations. While director of community relations at the New York City Department of Buildings, he spent a cold winter's night in 1967 in a Queens housing project that lacked heat, to publicize the circumstances of tenants there.

He proposed a $6 billion "clothing stamp" program that would provide clothing for the poor nationwide while assisting the city's struggling garment industry. Another proposal would have replaced the site of the former Madison Square Garden with an indoor amusement park. Tatum was part of a group that purchased the paper in the 1970s, the third ownership group in the history of the publication, which included notable investors such as former New York State Comptroller H. Carl McCall and Manhattan Borough President Percy E. Sutton. By the mid-1980s, he had invested more than $400 thousand in the publication, most of it borrowed from banks against the value of his real estate holdings. Tatum acquired control of the paper in 1983 and became the paper's sole owner in 1996 after acquiring the stake of the last independent shareholder. During his 25 years with the Amsterdam News his name was "nearly synonymous with the paper's", as described in a notice by The New York Times announcing his death. Though circulation dropped from 58,907 in 1977 to 25,962 in 2000, the paper remained influential.

During the 1984 presidential election, Tatum declined to endorse the candidacy of Jesse Jackson or any of the other Democratic Party candidates. During Tatum's tenure, the paper published a defense of Tawana Brawley after official findings found her 1987 sexual assault claims to be false. In 1989, he decided to disclose the identity of the sexual assault victim in the publicized Central Park 5 case. While Ed Koch was Mayor of New York City, Tatum wrote a weekly editorial series, "Why Koch Should Resign", that ran on the front page from February 1986 to September 1989, accusing Koch of leading an ineffective and corrupt municipal government that did not address the concerns of minority residents of the city. After Koch lost the mayoral primary in 1989 to David Dinkins, Tatum's last editorial read, "On September 12 at 11:50 p.m. Edward I. Koch conceded defeat in the primary. December 31 will be his last day of work. End of series."Tatum was credited by members of the city's Jewish community with improving the paper's balance in coverage of Jewish subjects.

The associate executive director of the American Jewish Congress recognized in 1984 that "Tatum has been sympathetic and understanding of problems confronting both Jews and blacks". Mayor Koch had earlier called the paper "an anti-Semitic rag" that had become "less rabid in its coverage than it was before", but held a July 1984 debate with Tatum on Jewish-black relations after Tatum published an editorial critical of the Mayor. While most of the initial investors had left over time, John L. Edmonds had stayed on over the years, feuding with Tatum over the management of the paper and Tatum's use of funds. A suit filed by Edmonds ended in 1996 with a jury finding that Tatum owed Edmonds just over $1 million that it determined had been diverted from the paper's parent company, with Edmonds' attorney describing that Tatum had "used The Amsterdam News since 1982 as his own personal piggy bank". Tatum stepped down in 1997 and named his daughter Elinor Tatum 26 years old and a graduate of New York University's postgraduate journalism program, to serve as publisher and editor-in-chief of the paper.

"I was in shock", she was quoted after the unexpected promotion. Tatum retained his position as chairman of the board after his daughter took over day-to-day operation of the paper, he retained the position until his death. Tatum wrote that Al Gore had chosen Joseph Lieberman as his running mate in the 2000 United States presidential election because Lieberman would be able to raise funds from fellow Jews, stating that "Gore and his minions did it for the money". Asked by his daughter why he did not pursue public office, he responded that he could help most in his role leading the oldest continuously-published African-American newspaper. Tatum married Susan Kohn, a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia, their daughter, was given the choice of following his religion and becoming a Baptist or of following her mother's faith and preparing for her bat mitzvah. As of 1984, he lived in the Manhattan's East Village in a 23-room triplex that he had bought in 1967 for $4,000 and had improved. Through the mid-1980s, he had made money in real estate and renovating abandoned or neglected buildings that were reconstructed and repaired using unskilled ex-offenders and political refugee laborers.

In 1984, Tatum established an informal group of Jewish and African-American leaders that met to address issues regarding relations between the two