Although iron ore is one of the most abundant metals in the earth’s crust, only those rocks which contain 25 per cent or more of iron are considered worthy of exploitation as iron ores. The total reserves of iron ore in Britain are estimated at 3.8 billion tonnes. Iron ores are widely found, though they […]
A great variety of non-metallic minerals is produced in Britain. Various common rocks are mined for building purposes, heavy constructional work and for roadmaking, as in the case of granites in Devon, Cornwall and Aberdeenshire, and basaltic rocks in Northumberland, Shropshire and parts of the Scottish Lowlands. Sandstones and limestones have for centuries been used […]
In 1742 Charles Macklin and David Garrick came to New Place (house built on the site of Shakespeare’s own house) and sat in Shakespeare’s garden under the famous mulberry tree that Shakespeare is said to have planted with his own hands. It is evidently after this that Garrick decided to “take Shakespeare into partnership’’, as […]
With its hotels of pink and saffron and grey stucco, its delicate ironwork balconies, its famous lanes and its snug flirtatious restaurants for savouring shellfish Brighton: is violently brought to life by the sea. Thundering waves of typhoon force roar across the Promenade and shatter the milliner’s windows on the other side of the road. […]
It is the sea that dominates the holiday programme in Britain. With no place in Britain more than 70 miles from the coast anyone can easily get to a sea-side resort of some kind in a day’s travel. Probably more people between 35 and 64 than any other adults go to the sea, some because […]
English Sunday observance laws, with all their ridiculous anomalies, go back more than 350 years but the most important is the Act of 1780. The 1780 law was framed to block the spread of new ideas sparked off by the revolutions in France and America® and to curb the growth of trade unions during the […]
While in America commercial TV rose out of an’ established jungle of commercial radio, salesman’s attitudes, publicity machines and a vast film business, in Britain it has burst into a more tribal and placid territory with the suddenness of an invasion. This mobile column has barged through the middle of many old British institutions: it […]
Just before the First World War when trade unions were beginning to grow rapidly and the Labour Party had begun to win seats in Parliament a newspaper called the Daily Herald was started. It was called “the miracle of Fleet Street’’ because the other newspapers could not see how a journal that did not have […]
By the standards of today’s English youth, to marry at twenty-two is already dangerously late. Marrying so young, having their babies right away, England’s youth are themselves parents with parential problems, often before they reach the age of twenty. Painfully conditioned by mass advertising, pop records, and the H-bomb, some young people try to use […]
The Law and the Church are powerfully interlocked with the History of Britain. Both judges and bishops sit in the House of Lords, and are honoured with ancient titles. Both reached a climax of fame in Victorian times. Both have been intensely conservative and resistant to change — as their votes in the House of […]
