The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy. The monarch of the UK represents the royal power. The king or the queen of the UK is the head of the state. This monarch is also the head of the state of the fifteen other Commonwealth countries. It is a well-known fact that […]

The Geography of the UK and its Location The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a country to the northwest of Europe. The UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea. Great Britain is the largest of the two main islands of the […]

The capital of the UK is London which is situated on both banks of the river Thames and has the population of seven million people. There are four areas or boroughs in London: Westminster, the City, the West End, and the East End. Westminster is the governmental and political centre of London. Westminster Palace (the […]

Thisisa popular picture of the twentieth-century aristocrat much promoted by plays and films — asad, impoverished man, living in a flat in a crumbling Tudor mansion, helping to collect half-crowns* and serve the ice-cream, while the public in thousands come out of charabancs, their plastic raincoats squeaking together, to gape at armour, four-posters and tables […]

It is usual today in England to confer titles which are not heritable, e. g. there are many “life peers’’ who have done outstanding public work and are given the title. For example C.P. Snow* became Lord Snow, as a life peer. Life peeresses, with the title “Lady’’, are also created. Also, since peers cannot […]

In Scotland everyone speaks well. In Ireland and in Wales everyone speaks well. But in England speaking well is hard to come by. Accent is of enormous importance, especially in the more snobbish South and more particularly in London, where the important jobs are handed out. Bernard Shaw, well aware of this insurmountable class barrier, […]

Much has been said and written about the British character. For centuries the British have been known as insular. Traditionally, according to Dave Morgan, the British have also been known as superior, snobbish, aloof, hypocritical and unsociable. For example, English confempt for the Irish was part of an increasingly entrenched disdain for foreigners in general, […]

From about 1930 until very recent times the cinema enjoyed an immense popularity in Britain, and the palatial cinemas built in the 1930s were the most impressive of the buildings to be seen in the streets of many towns. Later, the rapid spread of television brought a great change. The number of cinema-goers has dropped […]

The roots of modern English drama stretch back into the past, and often the process of its development is plain enough to trace. The widespread dramatization of fiction in the twentieth century is yet another link with literary tradition. There have been dramas based on the life and work of the Brontes, such as Jane […]

The principal post-school institutions of higher education are the 47 universities (including the Open University), of which 36 are in England, 8 in Scotland, 2 in Northern Ireland and 1 in Wales. The English universities are: Aston (Birmingham), Bath, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Brunei (London), Cambridge, City (London), Durham, East Anglia, Essex, Exeter, Hull, Keele, Kent […]