United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

1. General Presentation

The British Isles are composed geographically of Great Britain (England, Wales, and Scotland) and Northern Ireland. Its full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and it is a member of the European Community.

The largest of the British Isles is called Great Britain. The second one comprises Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Western Scotland is separated from the main land by the Hebrides archipelago and Orkney and Shetland are placed on the North East.

The Isle of Man in the Irish Sea and the Channel Isles are self-governing and they do not belong to the United Kingdom. The Isle of Wight (off the Southern coast of England), Scilly Islands (South cost of England, Lundy Island (off the South-West coast of England) and the Channel Islands (two islands off the Southern coat of England close to the French Normandy) and the many other off shore island belong to the same geographical term of British Isles.

Britain has an area of 242,500 sq. km and its climate is a mild temperate one. The daily weather is mainly influenced by depressions moving fast across the Atlantic being subject to frequent changes but to few temperature extremes. The average annual rainfall is fairly well distributed between 1,600 mm in the mountainous areas and less than 800 mm over central and eastern regions. The driest months are from March to June and the wettest ones from September to January. The population of United Kingdom was, at mid 1990 - of around 57,411 million people with a density of 245 persons per sq km.

The full name of the country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Up until the XVII centuries there had been four countries in the British Isles: Engalnd, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Easch one had its own sense of identity, its own history, even its own language. There was no such word as British. The peoples were English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish. By the end of the XVII century the word British was used for the first time in Rule Britania song was composed and Union Flag created.

The Union flag or the Union Jack symbolizes the administrative union of the countries of the United Kingdom. It is made of the individual flags of the kingdom's countries all united under the Sovereign - the countries of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

St. George is the patron saint of England. His emblem, a red cross on a white background is the flag England and a part of the British flag. St. George's emblem was adopted by Richard the Lion Heart in the 12^th century. Saint George was a brave soldier who protested against the torture of the Christians and died for his belief. In times of great peril he is called upon to help save the country from its enemies.

Union Jack is an alternative name for the Union Flag acknowledged by the Admirality and Parliament in the early XXth century. The term "jack" refers to the flag thaty is flown from the bowspit of a ship denoting nationality. The exacty origin of the name is still unclear. It may get the name from the "jack" of naval vessels from which the original Flag is flown.

The motto of England is "Dieu et mon droit" (God and my right) that was first used by Richard I in 1198 and adopted as a royal motto of England by Henry VI.

The Coat of Arms of UK. Is a shield bsupported by the English Lion on the left, and on the right by a unicorn of Scotland. (the unicorn is chained because in medieval times a free unicorn was considered a very dangerous beast (only a virgin could tame it). The coat feastures both the motto of the British Monarchs (Dieu et mon Droit) and the motto of the Order of the Garter "Honi soit qui mal y pense" on a representation of the Garter behind the shield.

The Royal Coat of Arms is used only by the Queen in her capacity as a sovereing. In its version used by the government, the crown is shown resting directly on the shield, with the helm, crest and mantling not displayed.

The Shield has four quadrants. The first and the fourth represent England and contain three gold lion pasant, with their right forepaws raised and their chad facing the viewer on a red field, the second quadrant represents Scotland and contains a red lion rampant on gold field. The third quadrant represents Ireland and contanis the gold harp of Ireland on ablue field. Wales was recognized as a principality by the creation of the Prince of Wales long before the incorporation of the quarterings for Scotland and Ireland in the Royal Arms.

The British National Anthem is God Save the Queen which originates in a patriotic song first performed in 1745. It became the National Anthem from the beginning of the 19^th century:

God Save the Queen!

Long live our noble Queen!

God Save the Queen

Send her victoriuos

Happy and glorious

Long to reign over us

God save the Queen!

The national flower of UK is the rose since the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) between the Royal House of Lancaster and the Royal House of York.

The British society is considered to be divided into three main groups of social classes: the Upper class whci consists of people with inherited wealth and includes some of thye oldest families, most of them entitled aritocrats. They are defined by their education, and their pastimes including traditonal sporting life including hunting, shooting and fishing. The Middle class includes industrialists, professionals, business people, tradesmen, etc., while the working class people include mostly agricultural, mine and factory workers. The class status is defined by the way people speak, their clothes, interests, education, and even the food they eat.

Historical Outlook

British Pre-historical Age

The prehistorical era is the one that the population of Europe witness the achievement of writing and the development of the rural civilization in the IV and III millennium, before Christ, and the emerging and development of the towns in the second and first millennium, before Christ. Then, the newly self-imposed Celtic leaders develop their social communities in the middle of Europe. The old bronze culture begins to develop from Portugal to Holland, and on both sides of the Channel, Wessex and Bretagne, become the trade centre with copper, zinc, gold and amber. Ireland spreads its artistic handicrafts on the continent. This is the very moment of the megalithic moment of the Stonehenge, when the population could afford it.

Towards the 1500 B.C. the wealthiness was declining, because of the scarcity of these metals. The discovery of tin led to the development of another type of culture. The new habit of the funeral urn that appeared on the British Islands spread on the continent, mythology started its development: the fire, the wagon, the sun are added to the old rituals of fertility. In the VIII century, when people used to settle on hill tops, iron began to determine the use of bronze that led to an important change of the social relationship and habits. The rich owners of that period appreciate luxury objects coming from the land of Greece and then from the Etruscan area.

Starting from 800 before Christ, there are two main stages of iron history corresponding to the archaeological sites considered as characteristic: Hallstatt in Austria and in La Teve in Switzerland where the Celts spread it the first migration wave. Some of the first main groups of the migratory Celts settled in London as the core of the strong settlements were in the antique Britannia, as the Romans used to call it. They develop the fortified cities as the one of Maiden Castle and begin to work the natural resources as the woods, land, salt mines and different metals that they turned into arms, agricultural tools and handicrafts.

The clear picture of an Early Iron Age settlement on the gravels of the London region comes from much farther west, on the site of London Airport at Heathrow. Archaeologists found on Caesar's Camp a hamlet of a quadrangular enclosure, defended by a ditch and a bank. Its northern part had been a cluster of eleven circular wooden huts with thatched roofs. It is clear that it was a community consisting of several families. A rectangular temple was also found, consisting of a shrine surrounded by a colonnade of posts, very much like a translation into wood and thatch of the stone - build Greek temples of the Mediterranean. It is suspected that scattered through the neighbouring countryside were similar small farming communities linked by kingship religion and trade, but with little sense of political unity beyond a tendency to co-operate briefly in self-defence in the face of a common danger.

The European expansion starts with trading relationship: the Roman producers exported wine, oil and ceramics. In 58, before Christ, Caesar, the Roman emperor fights against Vercingetorix and conquers the Gaelic territory that belonged to a Celtic population. From that moment most of Europe fell under the control of the Roman Empire.

1.2. The Roman British Isles

A substantial contemporary work of this time is 'The Ruin of Britain" - a tract written in 1504s by a British monk named Gildas. His purpose was to denounce the evils of his days in the most violent possible language. The Venerable Bede, a monk in the Northumbrian monastery of Yarrow completed his Great Ecclesiastical History of the English People in 731. There are also the Anglo Saxon Chronicles supplying information about the southern English kingdoms. The written sources, the archaeological findings make evidence of the fact that the history of the Anglo Saxon settlements began under the Roman Empire.

Claudius, the Roman emperor is the one that lands on the Britannia territory in 43, before Christ and conquers Camulodunum (Colchester), marking the Roman history of the isles. The territory is then defended according to the needs, by four, then by three legions situated at Carleton (Ssca Silurum), York (Eboracum) and Chestier (Chestria).

The forces assembled to sail to Britain comprised four legions and about the same number of auxiliary troops, around 40,000 men in all The Roman disciplined military machine had to be faced by the British forces that retained their old character. The invasion met with fierce resistance from some of the British tribes, but others surrendered easily or joined the Romans.

It might have saved Rome much trouble and expense if it had limited its conquest to the area it already controlled. London was founded as a supply port; it is possible that from the beginning it was intended to become the administrative centre of Britain as well, but its position at the hub of the radiating system of the main roads was being built, very soon made it also the business centre of the province.

When the Romans came to Britain, the London Clay surface was covered by oak forest with dense undergrowth of hazel, hawthorn and brambles. In the wet alluvial soil of Thames, would have been thickets of alder and willow. The river had served as a great waterway into Britain throughout prehistory and settlers were attracted to the more open country on its banks, especially where the river could be crossed by fords, where they could scatter its rural population in units no larger than a small village, gaining living by mixed farming and fishing. Similar settlements became later the city of London, which was called Londinium by the Roman emperors.

The Roman city of Londinium did not lack monuments and statues, but only a few fragments have survived. One of the most important archaeologists that excavated and studied the remains of the city was Sir Christopher Wren; he traced back some buildings and their use, streets and the London Roman Wall. The main archaeological finds can be seen in Guildhall and London Museum.

The work of organizing Britain as a regular Roman province progressed. Its governorship enjoyed high status of an ex-consul and carried with it the command of an exceptionally large group of legions. In its first century and a half as a province, men of particular distinction were regularly chosen. It was not only a military challenge where reputation could be won, but Britain also regarded as a land of natural abundance. By AD 47 the exploitation of Britain's mineral resources had began, especially silver.

The 50's were a decade of urban development. Only the agricultural hinterland remained largely unchanged and the progress towards the universal adoption of the money economy was slow. However, by D.A. 60, with the governor Suetonius Paullinus, the province looked set to progress steadily. But the British can bear to be ruled by others, but not to be their slaves as Tacitus commented about the British character. When Prasutagus, in AD 61, the client king of the Iceni had left half of his possessions to the Roman Emperor and family, expecting that this would protect his kingdom and family they were treated this as if it were an unconditional surrender. In answer to Boedicia's protest, her wife, she was flogged and her daughter raped. Rousing her own tribe and her neighbours, she swept through southern Britain, burning Colchester, London and Verulamium (near St Albans), torturing every Roman or Roam sympathiser she could catch. The governor only just avoided the total loss of the province. Nero, who was the Roman Emperor of that time, had been inclined to abandon Britain altogether.

The recovery of Britain one decade after Bodicea appraisal was genuine but unspectacular. But the outbreak of the civil war across the empire in AD 69 revived the spectre of generals fighting for supremacy. By AD 83-84 a succession of governors had carried Roman forces to the far north of Scotland and garrisons reached the edge of the Highlands - and were pressing ahead with Romanization. The period from AD 70 to 160 is the age when Britain truly became Roman and its lasting features as part of the empire emerged. The phenomenon of the absorption into the Roman system was determined by the devolution of the burden of routine administration to the local aristocracies that re-planned the client kingdoms. In the beginning and middle of the second century, the development of the cities and towns of the Roman Britain came to their full extent. The administrative centres of the civitates were provided with civic centres: the forum and basilica that provided market, law courts, civic offices and council chambers; the public baths which provided the urban centre for relaxation and social life; public monuments honouring imperial figures and local authorities; theatres and amphitheatres. The flourishing of the towns depended equally on the emergence of a lively urban population made up of officials, professions, traders and skilled artisans. But the urban expansion could not, of course, have rested solely on the basis of a relatively small native aristocracy that accepted the Roman ways. But spread of town life was followed by the appearance of "villas" in the country side indicating that the British gentry retained their connection with the land. There were also veterans discharged from the legions that settled in cities deliberately founded: Colchester, Lincoln, and Gloucester. Some of the inhabitants were immigrants or visitors from other parts of the empire. Nevertheless, the population of Roman Britain remained overwhelmingly Celtic.

In the time of Hadrian, - man of restless and extraordinary character and energy - a wall was built on the line to which Roman forces had been withdrawn in stages over the thirty years since the extreme point of expansion. The Hadrian's Wall was brilliantly original. Similarly, the agricultural colonisation of the East Anglia involved water engineering on a grand scale. Hadrianic London saw the demolition of the old forum and basilica and their replacement with a complex twice the normal size

In the Antonine period the development reached its first peak, as the empire is generally considered to have been enjoying a golden age of tranquillity and prosperity. In Britain the economic Roman system had been adopted. It was based on a money economy and large scale, and long distance trade. Roman fashion was dominant and classical art and decorations widely adopted. The most important artistic impact on the Britons of Roman conquest was the introduction of figurative style, particularly in sculpture, wall-painting and mosaic, but also in minor arts and crafts - jewellery, pottery, furniture, household goods. The Roman pottery alone reveals the existence of a "throw away society" that is quite different from what went before or came after. Roman Britain was a religious kaleidoscope, ranging from the formal rites of the Roman State - Jupiter, Juno and Minerva - and the Imperial Cult that had been grafted on to it, through a wide range of religious imports to the local Celtic cults.

In the 160s the mood began to change. In the reign of the next emperor, Marcus Aurelius, barbarian pressure on the frontiers of the empire became serious. The cities and the towns, lying on the main roads, were the obvious targets for tribes or war parties on the move. Walls were a first-rate form of the civic defence and their prevalence in Britain must indicate a great awareness of threat.

By middle of the century, rampant inflation had severely damaged confidence in the currency. At this point almost total disaster stuck as barbarians attacked in both East and West. It is not surprising to find London and York being chosen as twin capitals when Britain was divided into two provinces. This was in line with the new policy to reduce the member of the legions under the command of any one provincial governor and thus the temptation to revolt. The planned conquest of Scotland was called off but security of the frontiers, was, however, accomplished. In the 270's the imminent collapse of the empire was averted. Major changes had taken place in the Roman State in those few years which take us into the period called "Late Roman Empire". The dividing force was the Emperor Diocletian who initiated, through his reforms, a period of change that transformed the Roman State. The new order must have arrived, in full force in Britain after the re-conquest by Caesar in the West, Constantinos I, father of Constantine the Great.

Towards the end of this century, in 395 when Theodosius, the Roman emperor dies and the empire is divided into two as a consequence of religious misunderstandings: The Eastern Roman Empire, including Constantinople and having as a runner Arcadius and the Western Roman Empire, including Mediolanum (Milan) and Ravenna, run by Honorius.

He was also capable of thinking and acting on the basis of Diocletian's conservative but immense reform, to set patterns for centuries to come. So, the first half of the fourth century can be called the last Golden Age of the Roman Empire due to Constantine. Socially and economically the State Empire in the West was marked by a polarisation of wealth and, to some extent, power between the greater landed aristocracy on one hand and emperor, court and army on the other. The financial administration of the provinces was different from that in the early Empire. Though the financial headquarters was in London, the old provincial procurators had disappeared. The governors of the individual British provinces were responsible to the vicarius for the taxation. The command structure for the army no longer had to correspond with the provinces. A new category of mobile field forces appeared having higher status and remuneration.

The final element in the Constantinian equation was the Church. The crisis of the third century coincided with a widespread desire for a more personal religion that offered consolation and meaning in this world and a better life in the next. Recent research has indicated a considerable amount of Christianization in the fourth century. The Golden Age did not long outline Constantine himself. His death in 337 left the empire divided between his two sons within the dominions of the younger Constantine. Towards the end of the II century the Roman Empire had to give up defending the wall built by Antoninus in the Northern part of Britain, as it wastes its power in the European territories. This is to be understood as an economic and monetary fall. The commercial exchange is restricted; the rural population finds the towns as a refuge, beyond their walls. The monetary system also washes its values when the content of valuable metals diminishes. The feeling of insecurity and unrest is favourable to the development of Christianity that expands remarkably, in spite of the persecutions against it that started in the third century.

Border problems became acute by 360, the moment when Scots from Ireland and Picts from Scotland attacked the Roman British Empire. In 360 a palace conspiracy ended in the murder of Constantine and the elevation of an officer of Germanic descent named Magnentius. After one year and a half Paulus was appointed with the aim of hunting down dissidents who introduced the reign of terror in which false evidence played a dominant part, horrifying even the most loyal officers and that left Britain in a weaker state to resist the barbarian troubles now pressing on them.

The nadir came in 367: Picts, Scots and Attcotti invaded Britain. Franks and Saxons attacked the coast of Gaul. Both the central imperial command - Emperor Valentinian and the senior officers responsible for Britain were taken by surprise.

The barbarians ranged unchecked in small bands, looting, destroying, taking prisons, or killing at will. Both civil authority and military discipline broke down. Theodosius was the one that saved the situation temporarily, and subsequent reconstruction of Britain seems to have been both brilliant and thorough. The barbarian's war parties and lands were picked off one by one and the Saxons defeated at sea. Forts were rebuilt and damaged cities restored.

The five centuries that elapsed from that moment on up to the year 1000 were decisive for the building of the old continent. This is the period when different migratory populations settle in specific areas giving birth to countries that are known nowadays. This is the period when the Western Europe of Latin culture with a Germanic shift is separated by the Eastern Europe of Greek culture with a strong Slavic shift. This is the great migration era.

The period is characterized by migratory waves coming from different places of the world: the Visigoths, Ostrogoths directed to the South West, the Vandals and Alans, that crossed the Rhine, the Burgunds, Francs and Alamanni to the West and Jutes, Angles and Saxons to Brittany; the Longobards to Italy. To the East of Rhine, the Saxons, Frisian, Turingians, Bavarians settle while the country of the Avars makes form beyond the Danube River.

The 7^th century witnesses two important migratory waves of the Slaves that settle between the Danube, Nistre and Vistula, spreading then to Volga and Ladoga Lake, to the West towards the Baltic Sea, and also to the Eastern Alps and Bohemian Mountains and the third one to the Southern Danube.

Europe is also the subject of Muslim invasion as the second wave, after having conquered Constantinople and divided Byzantium. They also conquer Spain, before being stopped at Poitiers in 732.

The IX and X century are also migratory periods. Europe is invaded by the Muslim Sarazins, that settled in Gallia and Sicily and the Vikings coming from the North that plundered first and then they settled in Normandy and the British Isles.

In this last period it's worth mentioning the Hungarians that invaded the central Panonic field.

The consequences of the invasion are of political nature, as the Western Roman Empire is replaced by little tribal states of Germanic origins, i.e. soldiers grouped under the leadership of a strong family representing an entire nation. These groups break up and regroup back into different structures according to their political interests of their leaders. This is the time when the Angles and Saxons settle and draw their own country on the British Isles.

Under these circumstances, Britain successfully took on the barbarian invaders and henceforth broke decisively with Roman rule. They have lost confidence in the system of emperor, bureaucracy and army as the best way of securing their still prosperous way of life. By that time after groups of well-to-do Roman provincials were starting to settle down tolerably comfortably, employing, in alliance with or under the rule of barbarians. But for the weakened middle and artisan classes the change must have been disastrous according to the archaeological supports: the massive pottery industry comes to an apparently abrupt end; by 420-30 coinage ceases to be in regular use. These facts, incidentally, make the dating of the end of the occupation of Roman sites in the fifth century more difficult than in earlier periods.

1.3. Early Middle Ages

In the first three centuries after the year 1000, the Western European settlements come to a remarkable demographic and economic expansion, until a new political and social organization makes its room: feudalism.

It is based on the principle of awarding a piece of land (feodum) vassals by the landlords in exchange of some services, by oath of allegiance (homagium).

The whole Western society is rebuilt starting from the very individual level, under the Church ruling that vouched for loyalty agreements.

This is also the time of feudal monarchy when the kings were placed on the top of the feudal hierarchy sometimes by violent operations as it happened with the Norman Conquest in Britain when William became king in 1066. The feudal character is also dominant in the way they rule their land and servants: a representative example is the British "Magna Charta" issued in 1215 by which the power of the landlords is acknowledged by the country-less King John whose power is limited.

It is also to be understood that the feudal social organization led both to the settlement of national states, and the affirmation of a new social layer of the bourgeoisie. They were grouped in trade associations protected by the landlords under loyalty agreements, and awarded specific privileges called "franchises".

In 1066 the country was a farming land originally owned outright by the men who settled and cleared them and inherited by their children. But these independent farms had no defence against the Viking raids or resources to tide them over disasters like cattle sickness, a series of bad harvests, fire or storm. Small land owners had surrendered their n nominal ownership of the land to some protectors who in turn, held the land in duty to this process of freedom loss was in fact the gain of a social system, the end of anarchy somebody higher. By 1066 the system was elaborate and stable. The social strata were made of serfs or slaves, cottagers or cottars, then villeins - farming around fifty acres, then thanes - who drew rents in kind from the villeins, then earls - each ruling one of the six great earldoms that covered the country and above all - the king. In parallel to this secular social ladder was the hierarchy of the church, from village priests to archbishops. Nobody was above the law.

Women used to card, spin, and dye, wove the wool and make clothes, boil the meat and bake the bread, milk the sheep and goats, perhaps cows, make the butter and cheese, love and scold the children, feed the hens, work in the field at harvest, probably make the pots and brew the beer. The children, not burden by school, herded animals, according to their size: gees or sheep or goats or pigs

Of course they went to church where they could hear the sermon of the priest in their language as religious works had been translated from Latin. Out of doors they played some kind of football that evolved later to the esoteric complexities of cricket. Indoors they played drafts or checkers and clever people played chess. They hunted and fished through necessities, but both have always had an element of sport. The rivers, now polluted, were teeming with fish, even salmon - water mill commonly paid a tax of eels - and the forest was full of game; but deer were strictly the King's or earl's prerogative.

The arts and crafts of England were known and valued all over Western Europe, especially the illumination of manuscript, embroidery and gold and silver; and there was a lively tradition of English prose. Such works of art were mainly creation of the church or the patronage of the rich. The pagan custom of burying treasures with the dead had ended at the coming of Christianity. The villagers celebrated festivals of the church and also pagan festivals that were preserved in spite of the church.

The sense of belonging to an English state, under English law was created before 1066. The idea of unity of the English people according to Bede (English historian: Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation in 720s) "goes back to the Anglo Saxon pagan peoples who worshipped sticks and stones at the edge of the world" as Pope Gregory famously put it. In the 10^th century, when the English nation included Danes, Norsemen, Britons, Saxons and Angles, the kings who created the kingdom of England still saw their task as the fulfilment of the promises implied in Bede: an English people under one king. Bede gave the English history which all could share, an interpretation which made sense of their past and their future. The English language was a response to the new unity and identity trends. The old subject-object-verb language became a subject-verb-object language, as was the speech of the Scandinavian Viking settlers, and this had already became English, common speech before Chaucer's day. The state had institutional structures which in the long run of the English history have tended towards allowing citizens certain freedoms to pursue their own work and happiness while protecting them from oppression. The West Saxon dynasty in the Viking Age organized the society for war, with heavy burdens on land owners and peasantry. They based their territorial units on the old shires, on Roman or British territorial grouping. Throughout the Middle Ages the boroughs the hundreds and their courts were crucial for taxation, justice, policing, law, military defence, and for the administration of the oaths which bound individuals on kin groups to king and community. Above the level of the hundred there was the old sheriff - which is still an office in USA - administered the shire through bailiffs, now held office in each hundred (originally the bailiff was the king's justicer employed in the hundred for the detection of crime). The hundred was the key unit of local administration. The shires were still working institutions into the twentieth century, to which the reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave a new lease of age until the reorganization of 1974. The sense of chosen people became a workable conception of the society of order and mutual obligation.

When King Edward died, without any children, there were at least six choices to elect an heir. The hereditary claim of King William was only by marriage. The news that king Edward was dead, and also that Harold was immediately crowned, made William angry, as he was not given any chance to make his claims. All the courts in Europe knew that he was Edward's heir, so he could not accept the news and do nothing about it. He decided to sail in force to England that very summer, to challenge Harold in battle and claim his just inheritance. There is practically no account of the events from the English side; for many years after, the English were too devastated by their disaster to write any entries in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. The battle took place on the field of Hastings which is now partly covered by the buildings of the Abbey William that was founded there as a penance for the slaughter, and by the town that grew up round it. The English never became Norman; they remained most stubbornly English, absorbed the invaders and made of the mixture of a new kind of Englishness.

Duke William of Normandy was acclaimed king in 1066 in Westminster Abbey on the very Christmas Day. The Norman guards outside the abbey, believing that inside something wrong happened, because of the shouts and acclamations, they set fire to the neighbourhood houses. The crowds rushed outside, and only the monks, the bishop and a few clergy managed to complete the ceremony of consecration of the king. The position of the new king was a precarious one, in spite of his victory at Hastings. He promissed that every man should be protected by law, according to his rank. But the measure of his promises was seen in the chronicle written by the Norman Monk Orderic Vitalis, which became the most important source for the history of England and Normandy between the Conquest and 1141. Every man's land was given to the new king's own followers and kinsmen. As a result, the Norman rulers had to face risings every year and they used to live in military operational units, as they had no particular aptitude for war and no feudal hierarchy, but a well preserved administrative one that dated back to Carolingian times: there were quotas imposed and obliged to serve in the royal family. They built castles to dominate the subject population. England received not just a new royal family, but also a new ruling class, a new culture and language. By the 1086 there were only two nerving English lords of any account, and most of the landlords were Normans. After 1070 no Englishman was appointed a bishop. By 1086 the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy was no more and its place was taken by new Norman elite who retained its old lands on the Continent so the two separate countries, England and Normandy, now became a simple cross-Channel political community. From now on, until 1204, the histories of England and Normandy were inextricably interwoven. The Angevin conquest of 1153-4 had, as an effect, the arrival of the Court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine that reinforced the dominance of French culture.

At this time the foreignness of English was the most striking. The old institutions and laws became illegal; the old English custom of local government, with local hearings in the vernacular had been done away with. In ecclesiastical architecture, although churches built in England at that time, often contain some recognizably English elements, their design came from abroad, sometimes from the Mediterranean world: Italy, Sicily or even Byzantium and France. The castles were strengthened with iron and stone and new ones were built. They had fire places, latrines, richly decorated chapels and water cisterns to avoid the need to continually fetch water from the well within the bailey. William of Sens, of French origin was called to rebuild the choir of Canterbury Cathedral after the fire of 1174. Similarly, the cathedral of Westminster Abbey was heavily influenced by French models. Its influence in the field of music, literature, architecture, French became a truly international rather than just a national language as it was used by any one who considered himself civilised. A well educated Englishman was trilingual: English would be his mother tongue; he would have some knowledge of Latin and he would speak French fluently. French was vital in the cosmopolitan society. It was the language of law and estate management, as well as the language of song and verse, of chanson and romance. But popular culture, represented by the tale, lasted for long. Comics, novels and stories still evoke the Norman yoke, with plucky free Saxon pitted against regimented Continental despots: Robin Hood stands up for the right of the oppressed Saxons against the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham. The legend of King Arthur was fixed in the popular imagination soon after the Norman Conquest. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth (History of the Kings of Britain), Arthur was a hero, a Napoleon of the Dark Ages. He has been the inspiration of the great medieval romances of Chrétien de Troyes and Thomas Mallory, the epics of Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites. The myth has lost none of its appeal and power in modern literature, film and popular culture: from Disney and Bresson to Indiana Jones and Monty Python the novels about Arthur show no sign of drying up.

About 2,000 writes and charters survived from this historical period: whole classes of the population were concerned with documents in terms of business. In the late twelfth century throughout England an increasing number of schools al all levels were established and by the 1220's two universities, first at Oxford and then at Cambridge, had been established. After 1071, William I, the Conqueror held on England was fairly secure. The Welsh and the Scots did not trouble him. Scandinavian rulers continued to look upon England with acquisitive eyes but their threat was never materialised. His attention was drawn especially by the vulnerability of Normandy as his neighbours took every opportunity to diminish his power. He died in one of his minor battle, in July 1087. His youngest son, William II, had restored his father's kingdom to its former frontiers, including England, the Conqueror's vast acquisition.

Yet, in spite of all his success as a generous leader of his soldiers, William's reputation has remained consistently low. He made his feudal lords his vassals to secure the frontiers that stretched England and Normandy. Although a serious-minded churchman, accustomed to the conventional piety and sober discretion of his father' court, he never married and he died without an heir. A hunting accident brought his life to an abrupt end. Henry, his youngest brother, was there when the king died, and he took possession of the treasury: he went straight to Westminster where he was crowned. As for the domestic affairs, the Gregorian reform movement placed the king in a difficult position: he tried to strengthen the unity between the state and the church, but it was Theobald Becket, a London Citizen of Norman origin nominated as archbishop of Canterbury that made this unity fell apart. After he was supported by the king for the nomination, he felt responsible for the community of monks and he refused Henry II to enjoy the same customs and privileges over the church. Less than a year later Becket was exiled. When he came back he was killed in the cathedral of Canterbury by an official delegation. The king swore innocent of any involvement with this crime. Thomas Becket became the most potent saint of the day. The Angevin empire was a time of economic growth. An important change was that land became a commodity, a piece of property which could be bought and sold used as a security for loans. This change helped fuel inflation which was stimulated further by imports of silver for works of art. The wool trade stimulated the growth of towns, and particularly of ports. Territories in Nantes, Toulouse, and Norman Vexim were recovered. The sheer size of his empire inevitably stimulated the development of local administration which could deal with routine matters of justice, finance. Government became increasingly complex and beaurocratic. Richard I (1189-1199) acquired an unchallenged position by his alliance with Philip Augustus. Since he had been made duke of Aquitaine in 1172, he spent most of his life on the Continent, in Crusades as he felt responsible to assist the kingdom of Jerusalem. When Richard suffered a deadly wound in 1199, when being engaged in suppressing a rebellion led by the count of Angouleme and the viscount of Limoges, the different parts of the Angevin Empire chose John as his successor. In his time inflation tended to erode the real value of royal revenues, and many families and religious houses were in financial difficulties. As a result, John levied frequent taxes and tightened up the laws governing the forest (a profitable but highly unpopular source of income) through Magna Charta, issued in 1215, which stipulated "judgement by peers or by law of the land so that to no one will sell, to no one will deny or delay right of justice". When he was excommunicated for his order to confiscate all church properties, he became vulnerable to rebellion and invasion. When he died, in 1216, he left a country torn into two by a civil war which was going badly. Henry III, John's nine years old son, (1226-1272) began to rule in his own right most until 1232. Most of the struggles for power took place in the council chamber and appeals to arms were rare and brief. As a part of some conciliatory moves, Magna Charta was amended and reissued. But he had to give up claims to Normandy, Anjou and Poteau and did homage to Luis IX for Gascoigne. The government initiated a far reaching programme of reform. The Parliament was founded, although it was not a new body. The term Parliament first appeared when the Courts of Law were reorganized at the end of Henry III's minority, as a court of final appeal, a role that it has never lost.

Henry was a good family man: he happily married to Eleanor of Province in 1236 and he provided generously for his wife family when life became difficult for his half-brothers. He rebuilt Westminster Abbey. Henry's heir of the throne, Edward, was on a crusade when he received the news about his father death and he proclaimed himself a king. He was the last Plantagenet king to hold court at Bordeaux. His leaving, in 1289, marked the end of an era. As a result of an inquiry into the activity of royal and baronial officials, he issued new laws on a wide range of subjects. They were mainly concerned with the rights and the liberties of the king. He was also the one to begin the era of perpetual wars. The Crown expanded its territories in North and West Wales to form a principality that covered half of the country: this was conferred on the king eldest son as the first English born Prince of Wales. Firmness, fairness and conciliation marked the relation between the new governors and the Welsh population. Edward I exerted equally the power over Scotland although the country had its own monarch and the Scotsmen's sense of independence was fierce. He took advantage of being invited to settle the question of succession and he declared himself "Lord Superior" of Scotland. Edward I also stripped Ireland of its resources of men, money and supplies for his wars and castle-building in Wales and Scotland. That led to administrative abuse and decay of order.

In this time England had reached the peak of its medieval population levels. A figure of five million inhabitants may be suggested for England in 13,330, with 10 % living in towns. It was a prosperous society and the peasantry shared in the general prosperity. Society had grown more prosperous through the growth of exchanges, and the expansion of the market economy. The number of markets continued to increase, to serve the needs of the local exchanges; it was also an increase in the number of those who did not support themselves from the produce of their own holdings: wage labourers, craftsmen, those engaged in extractive and manufacturing industry. They were dependant on the market, which made them vulnerable to fluctuations in the price of grain. A merchant of Bruges in 1250's, surveying the main sources of his trade, noted that "from England come wood, lead, tin, coal and cheese". England was a country rich in minerals, which supplied the raw materials for the manufacturing industry of Western Europe. The cloth industry was based on household system of production and corresponded to different stages of the output. In the fifteenth century the cloth went further afield to the Baltic and Mediterranean. In the region of Toulouse the marriage-contracts often specified the source of the cloth that was to be provided for the bride. In the early fourteenth century this came from Flanders and Brabant, but in the 1450s it was the English cloth that was often specified. Ordinances of the local variety made by the king's council and the civic officers made the prices of foodstuffs, take-away meals and accommodation to be fixed. Doctors were to be properly qualified, and prostitutes, whether qualified or not, were to be kept off the streets. Archaeological findings show some other professional occupations: coal, linen, iron, pottery, kilns. The records of royal governments show coal put to military use, as fuel for smelting the iron used for siege engines and to cast anchors for the royal barges. There were individual "free" miners also who had small holdings and worked at mining only part-time. Silver vessels were widespread in late Medieval England. The chalice and pattern found in twelfth century priest's burial are typical of many such. In the thirteenth century the main chalice in each church would be made of silver but also a wide variety of pewter spread to households of all levels.

In May 1337, Philip VI of France declared Gascony forfeit. It was not to be until the 1450's than one of his successors was able to carry this judgement out. The intervening period is commonly referred to as the Hundred Years War. Edward proclaimed that it was he who was the rightful king of France, his title descending via his mother Isabella. The king's claims in France, the victories he had won brought uncertainty to France. Richard of Bordeaux, then aged ten, was crowned as Richard III.

Edward III introduced to England the first striking clocks, the earliest of which was installed in the keep of Windsor Castle in 1361. The clocks were made in England but the technology was imported from Italy. The king taste was clearly revealed by his residences: his bath-houses must have been among the wonders of the day. There was water supply at Westminster. He established the Order of Garter and he became famous for his shows organized each year on St. George's Day.

In the time of war, the profession of arms developed into the famous tournaments, a peaceful warfare in which all the knightly class of England" processed in their finest clothes, their tunics in red velvet and their caps of white fur. After the procession, on the three following days, battle was joined. This was left to the professionals. The ladies, watching on the sidelines, were central to the whole concept of chivalry.

A dramatic and most significant fourteenth-century European history was the Black Death, between 1349-1399 which originated in Central Asia. It spread by sea from the Mediterranean, and along the shipping lanes which linked it with Northern Europe. The fearful mortality rolled on, following the course of the sun into every port of the kingdom. People died in great numbers. It is impossible to provide exact figures for neither the church nor the state kept any register of the deaths. Alongside the plague there was also a whole range of infection diseases - influenza, typhoid and tuberculosis against which there was no inoculation. The fall in the population had important repercussion in the English village. The peasants moved away and their manpower and service were lost to the lords and to the village community entirely. The first very clearly visible on the ground was the decay of buildings. The abandonment of some settlements does not seem surprising either. The difficulties of everyday life, the new poll taxes imposed for the one hundred years war against France, the corruption at the court, the grievances of individuals and community quickly grew into a major revolt. The events were so dramatic. The prophet of the rioters was John Ball, and their general was Watt Tyler that turned the groups into a force with some sense of discipline. The demands were clear and the arguments well-rehearsed. They required that labor services be performed only on the basis of free contract, though they wanted also the right to rent land at fixed price.

1.4. Tudor's Age

The economic growth encouraged trade and urban renewal, inspired a housing revolution, enhanced the sophistication of English manners and bolstered new and exciting attitudes among individuals derived from Reformation ideas and Calvinist theology. England became economically healthier, more expansive and more optimistic under Tudors than at any time since the Roman occupation. But there were still pernicious evils of the society: inflation, speculation in land, enclosures, unemployment, vagrancy, poverty, urban squalor. Certainly, a vigorous market arose among dealers in defective titles to land, with resulting harassment of many legitimate occupiers. Rising population, after the Black Plague, especially the urban population, put in tense strain on the markets themselves: demand for food often outstripped supply, and agricultural prices began to rise faster than industrial prices from the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII, which accelerated the sixteenth century progress. But the greatest triumph of Tudor England was its ability to feed itself. The mass mortality on a national scale was absent from Tudor's England with a possible exception of Mary's government after 1555, when a serious mortality crisis occurred. But the starvation crisis in England were abating, rather than worsening, over time. Despite the vicissitudes of price index, the consequences of changed patterns in agriculture and proliferation of vagabondage, multiple occupations - domestic self-employment and cottage industries flourished in this age. Town dwellers grew vegetables, kept animals and brewed beer, wage-labourers employed by great households received meat and drink in addition to cash income.

The Tudor practiced their belief that ability good service and loyalty to the regime, irrespective of a man's social origins and background, were primary grounds of appointments, promotions, favours, rewards. This belief was most evident in Henri VII's use of royal patronage by which the Crown awarded grants of offices, lands, pensions, annuities or other valuable prerequisites to its executives and dependants, and was thus its principal weapon of political control, its most powerful motor of political ascendancy. But the revenues of the Tudors were increasingly inadequate in proportion to the expanding functions of central beaurocracy. Henry VIII, who succeeded, began his triumphant reign by marrying his late brother's widow, Catherine of Aragon. With the Tudor dynasty apparently secure, England had started to become vulnerable. His first divorce dropped into the religious maelstrom of his time. Although Catherine had borne five children, only the Princess Mary had survived, but the king demanded the security of a male heir to protect the fortunes of the Tudor's dynasty. That is why he soon believed that papal primacy was a ploy of human invention to deprive kings and emperors of their legitimate inheritances. His divorce made him believe in his royal supremacy over English Church. So he took charge of his policy and government. And finally threw off England's allegiance to Rome in an unsurpassed burst of revolutionary statute-making: some acts by which all English jurisdiction, both secular and religious, now sprang from the king - and abolished the pope's rights to decide English ecclesiastical cases. Henry VIII now controlled the English Church as its supreme head in both temporal and doctrinal matters. Monasteries were dissolved in 1536. The process was interrupted by a rebellion, the "Pilgrimage of Grace", which was brutally crushed by the use of Martial law. The process that followed was the wholesale destruction of fine Gothic construction, melting down of medieval metal works and jewellery and sacking of libraries - the most extensive acts of licensed vandalism perpetrated in the whole of the British history.

Anne Boleyn was already pregnant when the king married her, and the future Elisabeth I was born. Henry was bitterly disappointed that she was not the expected son, blaming Anne and God. Anne was ousted and executed in 1536. Henry immediately married Jane Seymour, but she died 12 days later after she gave birth to Price Edward. The next wife he married next was Anne of Cleves to win European allies, but she didn't suit; they divorced easily, as the union was never consummated. Catherine Howard came next as Henry's fifth queen. She was executed in 1542 for adultery, and finally he married Catherine Parr.

Internally, he conceived the English hegemony within the British Isles - Wales, Ireland and Scotland. The Union of England and Wales had been legally accomplished by Parliament in 1536. Wales was made subject to the full operation of royal writs and to English laws. English language became fashionable. Englishmen regarded the Union as the dawn of a civilizing pro\cess, the Welsh men, by contrast, considered the annexation as crude, for it was not a treaty between negotiating partie, as was the case with Scotland in 1707.

Tudor Irish Policy had begun with Henry VII's decision that all laws made in England were automatically to apply to Ireland and that the Irish Parliament could only legislate with the king of England's prior consent. In the wake of Irish pressure and the revolt of the American Colonies, the British Parliament abandoned its control over Ireland in 1783. The Act of Union of 1801 reversed the change in favour of direct rule from Westminster.

By right of Birth, as well as under Henry VIII's will, Mary, Catherine of Aragon's daughter, was the lawful successor. She succeeded in being safely enthroned at Westminster. Mary's true goal was always England's reunion with Rome; persecution was a minor aspect of her programme, although he burnt a minimum 274 persons; She was not successful in her intend to restore Catholicism in the country.

Elisabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Mary Boleyn ascended the throne in 1558 and she ruled England for forty-four years. It was the time that the Anglican Church became the strength of Tudor's domestic stability. It was plainly Protestant, even if it retained altars and vetements. After 1559 the Catholic cause was directly linked to that of dynastic intrigue which aimed to depose Elisabeth in favour of Mary Stuart, of Scotland. Her grandmother had been Henry's sister, Margaret, so she hoped that the Virgin Queen die and she would succeed her in a Catholic coup. But when she lost the battle at Longside and fled to England, Elisabeth imprisoned her and executed her in 1587.

One of the most important successes of Elisabeth's external politics was the defeat of the Spanish Armada which tried to invade England and control the English Channel. The country had gained considerable prestige, but Elisabeth never again committed her whole fleet in battle at once.

Elisabeth's last years were tainted by the cumulative strain of a war economy, the Irish crisis, Essex's rebellion and series of localized famines. These years mark also the first key phase of the English housing revolution. Probate inventories suggest that the average size of the Tudor house was three rooms at the beginning of the dynasty. Towards the end of Elizabethan's reign it was four or five rooms, but after 1610-40 saw the figure rise to six or more rooms.

1.5. The Stuarts

The population of England had been growing to a steady progression of economic output and on the family planning habits of the population.

In 1600 England consisted of a series of regional economies achieving self-sufficiency. Most market towns were places where the produce of the area was displayed and sold. By the end of the century, England had for long been the largest free trade area in Europe. Gradually, a single, integrated national economy was emerging. Agricultural and manufactured goods exchanging led to the shop age. By the 1690, most towns, even the small ones, had shops in the modern sense. The towns, in which hundreds gathered regularly for local courts and commissions, encouraged the service and leisure industries. Some small centres of manufacturing towns, such as Birmingham and Sheffield or cloth-furnishing towns, such as Manchester or Leeds or shipbuilding towns such as Chatham, became notable urban centres. Some of them increasingly concentrated on the sales of services. The age of the spa and the resort was dawning. Patterns of migration begin to be admitted: young people moved to take apprentiship or tenancies at farms. The other was subsistence migration of those often travelling long distances to find employment opportunities. An increasing number of people were forcibly transported as a punishment for criminal acts, particularly in the 165o's. In addition to the transatlantic settlers, an unknown number of crossed the English Channel and settled in Europe making for religious houses or mercenary military activity. Whereas the sixteenth century had seen England become a noted haven for religious refugees, in the 17^th century, Europe and America received religious refugees from England. The only significant immigration in the 17^th century was of Jews who flocked in after the Cromwellian regime had removed the legal bars on their residence and of French Huguenots escaping from Louis XIV's persecution in the 1680s.

From social point of view England of the 17^th century was that of gentry and peerage. Everybody had an economic status: husbandman, cobbler, merchant, attorney, etc, but the peerage and gentry were noble, everybody else was ignoble or churchlish. The gentleman or nobleman derived his income and he had time and leisure to devote himself to arts of government. He was independent in judgement and trained to make decisions. He rented out his lands, wore cloth and learn read Latin; the yeoman was a working farmer, wore leather, read and wrote in English. By the end of the 17^th century, there was an emerging social group of men whose interests, wealth and power grew out of: they invested in trade, government loans, in mineral resources, in improved farming. It became known as aristocracy.

While rivalries in the colonial spheres were intensifying, no territories were ceded and expansion continued steadily. The monarchy lacked coercitive power: there was no standing army or organized police power. The guards which protected the king and performed ceremonial functions were created by the Restoration. The Crown's control of schools and universities, of pulpits, of the press was never complete, and it may have declined with time.

The dynasty was dominated by several Civil Wars. It is probable that at some moments in more than on in ten of all adult males was in arms. Armies had to be raised in every region and money and administration were to sustain them. The two traditional war parties were the King's army and the Parliament's Army but the hostility of the populace to both sides made the fruits of victory hard to pick. To win the wars, Parliament used to impose massive taxation and granted extensive powers, even arbitrary to its agents. Their source was mainly religious and against centralized military rule. But the people became convinced that the Civil War had never solved anything, but a much more radical transformation of political institutions was necessary.

From 1649-53 England was governed by the Rump Parliament which assumed unto itself all legislative and executive powers. Oliver Cromwell decided to call an assembly of saints whose task was to institute a programme that he hoped it would bring the people to recognize and to own the promises and prophecies of God. From December 1653 until his death in September 1658, Cromwell ruled England as Lord Protector and Head of the State. By executing Charles, the first Stuart, Cromwell cut himself from justifications of political authority rooted in the past. His self justification lay in the future, in the belief that he was fulfilling God's will. To achieve the future promissed by God, Cromwell governed arbitrarily. Ironically, he was offered the Crown. He became source of instability of the regime he ran. With his death, the republic collapsed. Eighteen months after Cromwell's death, one section of the army decided that free elections should be held and Charles II was recalled and his reign was declared to have begun at the moment of his father's death. The Restoration Settlement sought to limit royal powers by handing power back from the centre to the localities. He sought to restore the Church of England, but with reforms that would make it acceptable to the majority of moderate Puritans. Finally he assented to the Act of Uniformity which restored the Old Church and promoted religious tolerance for all non Anglicans. His son James continued his father's policy so he issued a Declaration of Indulgence giving the Catholics and any other religion on the territory full freedom which is still in force nowadays.

The abolition of monarchy and the experience of republican rule had a very limited impact. The democratic ideologies were incompatible with the development of a global British Empire that started to expand into the West Indies and along the Eastern seaboard of North America, into extensive trade networks with South America, West Africa, India and Indonesia. This could only be sustained by a massive increase in the ability of the state in the second Civil War of 1688.

The British revolution does not stand as a turning point. It may have achieved little, even less about political and social institutions, but it deeply affected the intellectual values: it gave way to the age of pragmatism and individualism. When John Locke wrote in his "Treaties of the Government" (1690) that all men are naturally in a state of perfect freedom to order, their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit without asking the leave of depending upon the will of any man, he was proclaiming a message only made possible by the disillusionment with old ideas, but a message which was to make much possible in the decades to come.

1.6. The Making of the British Empire

The early sixteenth century marked a new period in the British Isles History. In the 14^th and 15^th century, after the fall of the Norman Empire, independent centres of local powers were spread in many areas of the land and by the mid 17^th century they were incorporated within a larger whole. Large scale emigration was characteristic for the twelfth and thirteen century, and Ireland became the first attraction for colonists from Scotland, Wales and England. In Scotland, the government of Elisabeth enjoyed a good deal of influence which increased when James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English Crown in 1603 and the country witnessed the gradual incorporation within a London-based empire. In 165o Oliver Cromwell's army conquered Scotland that came into a parliamentary union with England in 1707. So far as Ireland was concerned, it was under Thomas Cromwell, during the 1530's, that the Irish magnates were stopped in their ascendancy to rule the country. The Irish system of land holding, based upon the rights of the kin would be replaced by the British freehold transmitted by primogeniture. The pro-English landlords of the east-coast rose in favour of a peaceful extension of Anglicisation, according to the model of Wales that was seen as a "backward" society, successfully "modernized" under English auspices. The extension of southern English influence of "law and order" to Northern England, Wales and Ireland were linked to the religious changes of the sixteenth-century in Europe. It was during Cromwell's years that the government was placed behind a Lutheran-style Reformation when the symbols of change were the royal supremacy, the translation of the Bible into vernacular, clerical marriage and the dissolution of the monasteries. Monarchy, Reformation and common law became all powerful symbols of a national unity.

The conditions for the emergence of an empire were due to economic and political developments: the rise of cloth industry that led to a prosperous society, and the political, administrative centralization around London that made possible its authority upon the rest of the British Isles. The culture of London, with relatively high rates of literacy, growing number of grammar schools, the expansion of colleges and halls at Oxford and Cambridge, a growth of industry and the development of the city as a financial and trading centre were taking on a character different from that of the north and west. The civil war of the Roses made possible the rise of a monarchy based upon the power of London. There were also the House of Commons and the House of Lords that came also to reflect the political and cultural dominance of the South East of the territory.

The impact of the Reformation provided an additional impulse towards the assertion of full cultural dominance by the South over the rest of England and Wales. The decisive decades were the 1530, 40, and 50 during which the ideas of Luther, Zwingli and Calvin made rapid headway in the literature areas of the South and East. During the 1530's Thomas Cromwell dissolved the monasteries and the chantries that were dedicated to saying messes and prayers for the dead.

The spread of the Reformation ideas in the South determined the social reactions in the North and West against the changes in Church known under the name of "Pilgrimage of Grace", indicating unmistakably that the North attempted to put an end to the Southern encroachment. On the contrary, Robert Kelt's rebellion in the South, pressed for the carrying out of the more radical aspects of the Reformation, by a wider access to education for the poor and the freeing of bondmen. The religious development in the South is usually considered as a sign of progress, but the values of Northern culture deserve the same sympathetic treatment as it placed loyalty to "good lordship", "blood" and "name" above loyalty to a bureaucratic southern-based Crown.

The Union of Wales with England during the years 1536-42 led to the opening up of Wales to direct intervention by the Westminster government.

By the end of the seventeenth century an English empire had come into existence throughout the British Isles.

The Acts of Union became parts of the administrative Revolution, but their intention did not necessarily happen on the ground. Much changed after the Acts of Union, but much also remained unchanged, as the distinctive cultures of North, South and West, embedded in kingship, land-holding and general outlook, did not appear overnight. The power of families created at these times was not to be challenged until the nineteenth century after industrialization had wrought its own revolution.

In Wales, as in Ireland, the Reformation initially made little impact at the popular level. A Welsh translation of the Bible was produced in 1588 for use in the churches, but in so dispersed and rural a society, with many local dialects, no single translation sufficed. In some ways, the Counter Reformation was more successful. Rural Wales remained, like rural Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, very much a traditional society in which local institutions such as wise man of the village, the fair, and the wake and kingship ties retained their hold in the face of attempts of "Anglicisation" by an English oriented gentry and clergy. It was not until the 18^th century that these popular cultures finally collapsed. The impact of the English food market was also a powerful instrument of social change. Farmers in the Welsh Lowlands responded to the English demand for meat, butter, cheese and wheat. Pressures grew for enclosure on the English model. The gentry attended the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In Scotland radical religious and social change came a generation later than in Wales. The Bible translation of the Bible was an important instrument of Anglicisation.

The history of Ireland during this period has followed its own distinctive path. The sixteenth century saw the collapse of feudalism. The revolts which took place in Ireland during the sixteenth century aimed to retain an established feudal world against the unwelcome pressure of a "modernising" state. Cultural differences also played their part in leading to charges of atrocity and counter-atrocity. Nevertheless, the success of the English administration was supported by powerful interests within Ireland, notably the towns.

The social and political revolution was enforced by the English common law. It was now possible for an Irish parliament to meet and draw upon representatives of shires and boroughs from all over Ireland. Political and administrative influence passed into the hands of those Protestant settlers who had arrived during the Elizabethan reign. Religious criteria were introduced as a condition for inheriting land. The aim of the Crown policy in the sixteenth century had been to create a class of landlords and tenants holding their estates under the common law. Social unrest took place at different moments when the English monarchy faced severe political crisis in both Scotland and England. They were accompanied by widespread killing and punitive actions.

An English-style Parliament was set up and the term Confederation was used for political reasons. During the confederate period the divisions between north and south re-emerged accentuated by the plantation of Ulster.

The Cromwellian conquest brought about the downfall of the Old English interests in Ireland. The New English Planters now styled themselves as "Old Protestants" to distinguish themselves from the "New Protestants" of the Cromwell army.

After 1688 France was to become a permanent rival of England in the battle for supremacy overseas. The Nine Year War (1688-1697) and the War of the Spanish succession (1702-13) involved Britain in both Continental and colonial warfare and the social burden of debt grew. The successive governments kept borrowing and the function of the taxes which were raised was merely to pay the interest charges on the debt. The achievement s of these years had a price in the social tensions and political conflicts that made possible the "South Sea Bubble", the general financial crash which went with it. The financial interests represented by the Bank of England had enjoyed a more than a favourable return on its investment during the wars. The Torry ministers of Queen Anne had encouraged the formation of the South Sea Company in 1711. It s management members had a strong interest in quick profits that depended heavily on the seas which offered the most promising prospects, deriving from the Anglo-Spanish treaty that had given the Company a monopoly of the Spanish slave-trade and a valuable share in the Spanish American markets for European goods. Speculators were encouraged constantly to invest and the constant inflows of funds justified new issues of stock. The inevitable was created by corruption and the naïve investing public: when confidence eventually failed and the bubble burst, the consequences were catastrophic, particularly for those who had sold substantial assets in lands or other forms of property to buy at absurdly inflated prices. The Parliament rushed through a statute severely restricting joint-stock companies for the future, but more dramatic action was needed to protect the National Debt and save the face of the Court. Moreover, the Bubble was part of an international crisis with matching disasters in Paris and Amsterdam. Great scandals disfigured public life at this time. The South Sea Bubble is a mirror of the emerging early prosperity mid-eighteenth century.

The general climate of this period involved anxiety on the part of the Church men. Theological speculations and polemical debate marked the progress of the early Enlightenment in England. But it also witnessed a considerable expansion of arts: theatre, with its political role that determined mounting campaigns of effective criticism: John Gay's opera depicted the Court of George II as a kind of thieves' kitchen; Sir Robert Walpole was also a satire subject of Henry Fielding: Pope's Dunciad, Swift's Travels, Bolimbroke's Craftsman all are products of remarkable polemical social satire. The characteristics of the century literature are the retreat into classicism, the appeal to country values, the attraction of the rural idyll and the criticism of the emerging moneyed world. The same satire of the 18^th century society was the subject of painting.

The industrial revolution locates its birth firmly in the mi-eighteenth century. Low food prices permitted higher spending on consumer goods and thereby encouraged the newer industries of the most striking developments was the construction of a nation wide turnpike system. By 1770, when the canals were beginning to offer stiff competition for freight, the turnpike system supplied a genuinely national network of relatively efficient transport, reducing to little further improvement until 1820, when Macadam and Telford were to achieve further striking savings. By the 1750s the full importance of the thirteen American colonies began to be appreciated not only because of the competition with France but also because of the implications of domestic terms. Urban improvement reflected the economic growth and raise of material life: the emphasis was on space, hygiene, and order. Many of the better preserved Georgian towns of today owe their character to this period of urban development. Sewers and water-mains were extensively laid or redesigned; streets and pedestrian walks were cobbled and paved. Houses were systematically numbered, squares cleared, restored and adorned with statuary and flora.

Village architecture change more gradually: the parliamentary enclosure acts had an important economic impact. Substantial capitalist farmers were coming to dominate, becoming a close counterpart in the development of industrial urban society. Against dearth and high prices, the bottom social classes, the poor organized combinations to defeat their master and clubs to provide an element of insurance, but the attempts to enforce the old apprenticeship laws were ineffective against the joint efforts of capitalist manufacturers and unskilled laborers to cheat them. The friendly clubs intended to provide pensions and sickness benefits. But the measures to suppress riots were rarely excessive and punishment was used in an exemplary way on a small number of those involved. If the poor looked to the state in vain, they looked to Church with but faint hope. The Church of the eighteenth century has a poor reputation for what would today be called social policy. Charity is voluntary and informal. Subscription and associations built schools, endowed hospitals, established poor houses, and supervised benefit societies. The paradox is that natural religion in the early 18^th century had produced a growing emphasis on monks rather than faith. Charity was the most obvious expression of religious devotion, but rational religion did not offer much spiritual consolation to those who lacked the education on the intellect to be rational. It was left to that rebellious daughter of the Church, the Methodist movement to offer the poor recompense in the next world for their sufferings in this.

England was the outstanding example in eighteenth century Europe of a plutocratic society. Most important of all perhaps was the emphasis laid on the flexible definition of the English Gentleman. Anyone, it appeared, who chose to dress like a gentleman was treated like one. Middle class, even lower-class aped the fashion, manners and opinions of polite society. This, it seems dear, was the authentic mark of a society in which all social values, distinctions and customs gave way before the sovereign power of cash. The sense of morals was built by equal/democratic treatment of the people, regardless their rank, without remission for noblemen. The system provides a crucial clue to the social stability of the period.

The national income agricultural contribution went down to a third; land became the subject of investment, trade, and manufacturing. It was a considerable distance stretched between the mercantile fortunes in the towns ruling the capital, and the small tradesmen or craftsmen who were the backbone of commercial England - "the new nation of shopkeepers", a phrase often attributed to Napoleon but in fact used by Adam Smith considerably earlier. Frequently self-made and always dependent on aggressive use of their talents, they were genuine "capitalists" in terms of investment of their labour and their profits in entrepreneurial activity, whether commercial or professional. Politically, their supremacy was rarely challenged in towns and in rural parishes they more nearly represented the ruling class, the lofty oligarchs and lordly magnates.

Education was represented by grammar schools that offered scholarly education to relatively humble children, but the clergy - teachers, although they did their best, rarely surmounted the discouraging effects of low salaries and poor support. The Scottish contribution to the European achievement of the age in the fields as diverse as moral philosophy, political economy and medical science was substantial. The disciplined and innovative instruction offered new foundations like Hertford in Oxford, or the genuine progress of mathematical scholarship at Cambridge. The characteristically middle class devices of subscription and fees brought into existence a great mass of practical, progressive education designed to fit the sons of middle class to staff the professions and the world of business. The result was emphatically a middle-class culture, with an unmistakable pragmatic tone. The Society of Arts founded in 1758, was an appropriate expression of the pragmatic spirit. Even the monthly magazines, designed primarily with a view to entertainment, featured myriad of inventions and speculations of an age deeply committed to the exploration of the physical world.

The 18^th century will also be associated with the amusements of a fashionable oligarchic society, represented by the great spa towns: Bath, Tunbridge, Dulwich, Epsom, Sydenham Wells and others provided attractive resorts for those seeking country air and mineral salts. Dancing, playing cards, tea-drinking and general social mixing were commonplace by the middle of the century.

The cultural achievements of the mid-century required neither sophistication nor subtlety. The moralistic interest in the social life takes the form of adventure stories of Smolett and Fielding and later of sentimental movement towards the domestic morality of the middle class with its stress on family life and its devotion to Calvinistic conceptions of virtue against heroic, but also on hierarchical notions of personal honour.

The mechanics of politics were all influenced by awareness of large political nation that led to polemical warfare in the newspapers, prints and pamphlets. The social changes whish made their mark on mid-Georgian England were profound, exclusive and of the utmost consequence for the future. The Imperial civil servants planned a new and rosy future for the transatlantic colonies. The American colonies would form a vast, loyal market for British manufacturers, a continuing source of essential row materials and of revenues for the Treasury. The West Indies would also maximize profits of a flourishing slave trade, and provide a steady flow of tropical products. The exotic character of the new possessions, made the impact of the new empire particularly powerful: men returned from service in the East India Company used their allegedly-gotten wealth to buy their way in Parliament. The "nabobs" arrived. American empire was even greater. The cyclical crisis in Anglo-American relations began with the Stamp Act and culminated with the rebellion war in 1775. The outcome was determined in favour of the New United States. The thirteen colonies were lost irretrievably. The Americans defended the rights of the seventeenth century Englishmen. In due course, the outcome was determined in favour of the United States; but almost more important than the overseas consequences of the American war were the domestic implications. Difficult imperial questions were treated with a mixture of caution and innovations. The Irish had demanded parliamentary independence of Westminster 1782 and achieved a measure of home rule. In 1791 Canada was given a settlement which was to endure, albeit uneasily, until 8967.

The economic problems caused an industrial society, and fundamental questions were raised about government, Parliament and the political system generally. An outcry of reformers rose against the waste and inefficiency of the court system. But the mid-1780 there was a growing sense of commercial revival and financial recovery: prosperity removed the stimulus to reform, more efficiently than any argument could.

1.7. Mid-eighteenth century - Revolution Time

Industrialization was gradual and relative in its impact. Karl Marx understood that capitalist industrialization failed to improve conditions of the working class. After 1917 Soviet Russia tried to prove the planned industrialization a viable alternative that proved finally to be a fiasco. The liberal economists restated the case for industrialization achieved through the operation of the free market. What market Britain off were qualitative changes, notably in patterns of marketing, technology and government intervention. Feudal title became effective ownership, the key to commercial exploitation. Trade more than industry still characterized the British economy. Besides agriculture, three sectors were dominant - coal, iron and textile. The first two provided much of the capitalist equipment, infrastructure and options for future development; but textiles made up over 5o percent of export. Wool had always been England's great speciality, though linen dominant on the Continent was expanding in Ireland and Scotland. Cotton rose largely through its adaptability to machine production and the rapid increase in the supply of raw materials that slavery in the South America made it possible. The rising demand meant that resistance to its introduction by the labour force was overcome, John Kay's -shuttle loom destroyed when he tried to introduced it but taken up along with James Hardgrave's hand operated spinning Jenny and Richard Arkwright's water-powered spinning frame. Cotton technology spread to other textiles slowly to linen and wool. But it also boosted engineering and metal construction. James Watt patented his separate condenser steam engine in 1774. The increasingly sophisticated technology required by the steam engine enhanced both its further application to locomotives in 1804, to shipping in 1812 - and the development of the machine - tool industry, particularly associated with Henry Maudlay and his invention of the screw-cutting lathe. The creation of a transport infrastructure made for a golden age of Civil engineering: water-carriage, horse-power, and mind-power. The country's awful roads were repaired and regulated. "Dead-water cannels" using pound locks were being built in Ireland. The water link between Manchester with a local coalfield and Liverpool showed the importance of water transport for industrial growth. Companies of gentry, merchants, manufacturers and bankers managed to link all the major navigable rivers.

The French Revolution was welcome in Britain. It was celebrated by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Robert Burns (Scots Wha'Hae'), Edmund Burke (Reflections on the Revolution), Tom Paine "The Rights of Man". But the postwar Torry government after 1815 encountered a new set of literary radicals: Coleridge and Wordsworth gathered to the bosom of the forces of order, were succeeded by Byron and Shelley. The new literary reviews, the rich culture of popular protest, from the new paper of Henry Hetherington and Richard Carlyle to the bucolic radicalism of William Cobbet and the visuary millenarism of William Blake.

The most of the war Britain avoided European involvement. It was the time when Britain gained some other geographical areas: India, where she achieved effective dominance, through Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and Ceylon and took over South Africa from the Dutch, and established a claim on Egypt. Informally, England secured a trading hegemony over the former Spanish colonies of Central and South America.

Before 1789 Britain had been part of a continental community. After 1815 Britain remained at a distance from European life. A diffuse blend and anarchism to religions millenarism marked the working-class movement up to Chartism. Economic and social theory moved towards the ides of "Incorporation". The intellectuals accepted the notion of political and social evolution. Darwin's Origin of Species appeared in 1859. Although no friend to liberalism, Thomas Carlyle's commendation of self-reliance and the work ethic gave individuals an almost religious quality. The middle class read "industrial novels", such as Disraeli's "Sybil", anxious about and intrigued by conditions in the great towns, trying to personalize their problems and reconcile them with individualist morality.

In 1832 an appalling cholera epidemic, sweeping through Europe from the Middle East probably killed over 30.000 in Britain. It dramatized the problem of rapid urban growth. The new industrial towns became smaller, densely packed. A tolerable house might take a quarter a quarter of a skilled man's weekly income and few families were ever in a position to afford this. If housing was bad, sanitation was worse. The new industrial society brought into question the organization of education. British industry was still dominated by textiles, and the market for them was both finite and subject to increasing competition from America and Europe. The industry was overcapitalized and the adoption of each new invention meant that the return on capital decreased. Real wages increased only slowly but not sufficiently to counter the decline of the hand work trades and the high marginal costs of urban life. In the 1840s events in Ireland seemed to bring the revolution perceptibly nearer. The potato blight of 1845 destroyed the basis of the country's population growth: between 1845 and 1850 up to a million died of the consequences of malnutrition and emigrated between 1845 and 55. The Irish had been wounded too deeply. They became more aggressive by the famine, and would in the future count on the embittered emigrants' brethren in America.

The new railway transport system made more money from passengers than freight. The old long-service army of about 42 per cent Irish, and 14 percent Scots in 1830 - poorly paid and wretchedly accommodated, kept the peace in Ireland and the colonies. In many small campaigns Britain's spheres of influence and trade advanced in India and in the "Opium Wars" of 18390-42 in China, although now on behalf of free trading merchants rather than the fading Chartered Companies. Early in 1848, Marx and Engels drafted the Communist Manifesto" in London, prophesizing on behalf of a small group of German socialists, a European revolution, to be led by the workers of those countries most advanced towards capitalism. Paris rose up against Louis Philippe on February, then Berlin, Vienna and the Italian States erupted. But Britain did not follow. There was no repetition of 1793. The republican government in Paris, who wanted to maintain co-operation with Britain, acted firmly against its own radicals, and did not try to export revolution.

The great Exhibition of 1851 celebrated the ascendancy of the United Kingdom in the marketplace of the world, although some of the Continental exhibits, especially those from the German proved to be of higher quality. The success of the Exhibition astonished contemporaries. Statistical analysis made on these occasions, revealed some important factors: for the fist time more people in the mainland lived in towns than in the countryside, so the growth of the population was due to the movement of the laborers that left the land for the towns leaving the lands deserted, although agriculture remained the largest simple industry. The situation led to the "Revolt in the Field in 1870's that was a motley affair as out-of-work laborers brought in the troops to harvest to crops. Another fact revealed by the statistics of the Exhibition Year revealed that England and Wales were only partly church-going. So England in the 1850s moved to be increasingly urban, perhaps increasingly secular and increasingly non-Anglican. Nevertheless, a great religious revival in 186t0 added a number of religious activists: Roman Catholic, nonconformists and even scientists found voices within this broadly based movement for progress.

Economically, "free trade" became a philosophy of political, social and economic organization. John Stuart Mill's "Principles of Political Economy", first published in 1848, the handbook of Mid Victorian liberalism, put the point in a nutshell: the state should stay aside. The individualist concept of the time gained also from the writings of Charles Darwin's On the Origins of Species" (1859). Evolution was equal to progress whether on the individual, national or global level. The laws of science considered as belonging to the positive concept were supposed to be obeyed by man. Consequently, Walter Bagehot, Herbert Spencer were strongly laissez-faire supporters. Individuals must acquire knowledge so that moral choices to be based on information, on self awareness and self-development, a s a result of the liberalism of free spirit in the mid Victorian society.

The 1850-s saw a spectacular expansion of daily and Sunday newspapers, especially in the provinces: there were over 1000 newspapers in Victorian Britain: Daily Telegraph, The Times, etc. Free trade became also the central orthodoxy of the British politics in the absence of protective tariffs.

The Free trade coincided with an economic boom, closely connected to entrepreneurial enthusiasm which all classes seem tom have shared. Even the distress caused when the cotton mills were cut off by the American Civil War was little. The British economy in Victorian period was extraordinary complex in its range of products and activities. It was strong in basic raw materials of an early coal and iron; an energetic manufacturing sector that pressed forward with a huge range to the enormous variety of small manufactured goods which adorned Victorian houses, and, by their export, Victorianized the whole trading world. The intense industrial activity rested on a sound currency and on a banking system which gained an increasingly important role in the c\economy. The growth of towns intensified. By 1901 only one fifth of the population of England and Wales lived in what may be called "rural areas",. At the end of the century London and Leeds also absorbed large Jewish communities. Some towns were still planned by civically- minded local councils with parks, libraries, concert-halls and baths. The growing towns were dominated by the railways which created a nationally integrated economy. They transformed the centre of towns and made possible for better0off people to live away from the town centre by providing transport from the suburbs. Filth from the trains, chimneys of the factories and houses, noise from the carts and carriages and horses on the cobblestones were specific for the Victorian Age. Their dynamism was partly determined by the machinery exhibited at the Great Exhibition. High farming-capital spending on fertilizers, drainage, buildings, farm machinery, roads linking with the new country side - led to considerable modernization. Although in 1868m 80% of food consumed in the United Kingdom was still home-produced, the significance of agriculture in the economy declined as towns grew. All this left rural society demoralized and neglected; Thomas Hardy's novels covered almost exactly the years of agricultural depression, captured majestically the uncontrollable and distant forces which seemed to determine the fate of the country inhabitants. The urbanization of the mass of the population and the decline of the rural areas not surprisingly had profound social consequences for all classes of the population. The standards of living of some members of the laboring population increased quite fast. Some money was available for more than the essentials of food, housing and clothing. Rows of neat houses, terraced or semi-detached, with small gardens, often both at front and rear of the house, testified to the successful propertied aspirations of this new societies. This surplus coincided not with a fall in the birth rate. This falsified the predictions of the classical political economists from Malthus to Marx. The control of family size opened the way to growing prosperity of the British working class. The growing prosperity of the "regular standard earners" led them to join trade unions as a means of safeguarding their gains of better wages and conditions of work. They guarded their privileges and hard-won ascendancy among their fellow employees given them by their qualifications through apprenticeship or their responsibility for skilled machine working.

The steady demand for skilled labour reinforced the influence and status of the craft unions which existed and not only for the purpose of wage negotiations, but also for a variety of self-help benefits and the trade unions were closely linked to: funeral, sickness and unemployment benefits, etc If the trade unions was the institutional expression of a growing working class, self-awareness, shared leisure activities especially for the male wage-earner, further encouraged the sense of solidarity. Football games, founded by public schools and university clubs, but essentially professional by the mid 1880s - became the regular relaxation of males in industrial towns. The teams encouraged a local patriotism, enthusiasm and self identification on the part of the followers. But the growing popularity of the socially integrative game of cricket represents the survival of individuality despite industrialization and division of labour.

The trip to the seaside, organized individually or by the firm became for many an annual excursion. It became traditional, and extended to rambling and cycling trips into the country side.

The development of a popular press and the rapid nation-wide communication made possible by the telegraph encouraged the other great working class recreation: betting especially on horses. Diets improved a little, with meat, milk, vegetables in addition to bread, potatoes and beer. The quality of housing became better: houses and people became cleaner, as soap became cheaper and generally available. Books, photographs, the odd item of decorative furniture began to adorn the regularly employed workman's home. Respectability, in the sense of having the use of money to demonstrate some degree of control of living style, some sense of settled existence, some rising of the horizon beyond the weekly wage packet, became a goal encouraged by the spread of hire-purchase companies.

By the end of the century a far more complex social pattern had emerged: the professions, businessmen, bankers, large shopkeepers represented the lower middle class. The service sector had become also much greater and more complex: a vast army of white collar workers managed and several in the retailing, banking, accounting, advertising and trading sectors. Women began to expect more from life than breeding children and running the household. They played an important role in charities, churches, local politics, arts, especially music. Some attended universities lectures and take examinations, but not degrees, but from the late 1879 women's colleges were founded at Oxford and Cambridge. The professions remained barred to women, but a few succeeded in practicing as doctors.

The British government sought successfully to devolve authority passing the Dominion of Canada Act in 1867, and the Commonwealth of Australia Act in 1900. Yet, the best 40 years of the century saw the annexation of the Pacific. Britain was the world's trader, with an overwhelming dominance of world shipping. In some areas, British attempts to trade were supported by arms - a notable example being the Opium wars. But "the chief jewel in the imperial crown was India. To safeguard it, and the route to that subcontinent, various annexations were made: Burma, Malaya, Egypt and Sudan came under British control; South Africa became literally Britain's chief imperial jewel after the War against the Boers and the Zulus, when gold was discovered in Transvaal.

Towards the mid 19^th century the overwhelming superiority of the British economy was much diminished. The USA, Germany, France and Russia were all substantial industrial powers. Britain became one among several, no longer the unaccompanied trail-blazer. In the 1880 and 1920 the influence of social Darwinism began to change options: the struggle for the survival of the fittest began to be seen less in terms of individuals and more in terms of competition between nations. "National efficiency" became the slogan intended to suggest willingness to use government power to organize and legislate for an "imperial race" fit to meet the challenges of the world.

1.8. Contemporary and Modern Times History

On the eve of the First World War Britain represented a classical picture of a civilised liberal democracy on the verge of dissolution, racked by tensions and strains with which its sanctions and institutions were unable to cope. The miners, railwaymen and transport workers claimed for their union recognition and a 48 hour week. In Ireland a state of civil war developed between the Protestant Ulster and the Catholic south. India and Egypt were troubled by nationalist movements. An underlying mood united purpose gripped the British nation. After the declaration of War, on the 4^th August, a time of panic settled. Only dramatic measures by the Treasury and the Bank of England preserved the national currency and credit. Manufacturing and commerce tried desperately to adjust to the challenges of war against the background of war. The broad consensus about the rightness of the war was not eroded over the terrible years. Eventually, by 1917, sheer war weariness was taking its toll, quite apart from other factors such as the growing militancy from organized labour and the Messianic appeal of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

The broad mass of the population retained its faith that war was just and necessary, and that it must be the fought until the total surrender of the German enemy, whatever the cost. Voluntary recruitment proved more successful than the compulsory method of conscription thereafter. The psychological and moral impact of those appealing years sank deep into the memory and the outlook of the British people. They profoundly influenced the literary sensibilities of a whole generation.

A major factor in the wide spread popularity of the war - and also in its subsequent bitter unpopularity - was the involvement of the whole population and the entire social and economic fabric in total war. It brought about a massive industrial and social transformation, a collectivist control. The original model was conceived by the Ministry of Munitions that became the engine of a massive central machine which invigorated the industrial structure through its "men of push and go". It achieved a huge impact as well on much different areas as social welfare, housing policy and the status of women. The state undertook the control over railways, merchant and shipping and the traditional system of industrial relations was wrenched into totally new patterns. The war ensured a continuing corporate status for the unions - and also for employers, combined in the Federation of British Industry. The appearance of powerful businessmen in key departments of central government represented the transformation in the relationship of industrial and political leadership. Edward VII's Liberal England was being turned into a corporate state, almost what a later generation would term "Great Britain Limited"

Leftist opponents of the war noticed that the imperatives of the war were achieved far more for social reform than had all the campaigns of the trade unions and of progressive humanitarians in half a century past. Fresh layers were being added to the technocratic professional, and civil service elite that governed Britain in years of peace. The administrative and managerial class expanded massively. Social reformers such as William Beveridge or Seebohm Rowntree, even the socialist Beatrice Webb became influential: wages went up; working conditions improved. Education policy changed and elementary education was made free and opportunities were sought from the elementary to the secondary and higher levels of education.

Governmental inquiries opened up new vistas for state housing schemes, an area almost neglected before 1914. Hundreds of thousands of working class dwellings were subsidized by local authorities. Public health became a public concern too as medical arrangements, better conditions for children and old people and nursing mothers and the national insurance system were improved.

The war was also a time of women emancipation. Nurse Edith Cavell, one of the thousands of women that served at the front, often in medical field hospitals, that was martyred by the Germans for assisting in the escape of British and French prisoners of war in Belgium, contributed to the public esteem of women in general. Women found vast new opportunities in clerical, administrative work, in many other unfamiliar tasks previously reserved for men only. The very dissolution wrought by total war exerted powerful pressures in eroding the sex barriers which had restricted women over the decades.

Externally, the war years encouraged further changes. It was, in all senses, a profoundly imperial war, fought for the empire as well as for king and country. Much was owed to the military and other assistance from Australia New Zeeland, Canada, South Africa and India. Anzac Day (with memories of Suvla Bay, Gallipoli) became a tragic, symbolic event in the Australian calendar. A Imperial Cabinet of Prime Ministers was convened in 1917 to assist the Cabinet of the mother country. In commerce, imperial preference was becoming a reality. The Imperial mystique was a powerful one at this time.

The main architect of the day, Edwin Leytens, inspired by William Morris and Herbert Baker turned their talents to pomp and circumstance by rebuilding the city of Delhi in order to symbolise the classical authority. The imperial idea was taken further than ever before by the secret treaties that ensured Britain being left with an imperial domain larger than ever after the war, with vast new territories in the Middle East and up to the Persian Gulf. Yet, in reality it was all becoming increasingly impractical to maintain. Long before 1914, the financial and military constraints upon an effective imperial policy were becoming clear, especially in India with its growing Congress movement. New and increasingly effective nationalist upraised against the British rule. By mid 1918, in Ireland Sinn Fein partisans and their republican creed had won over almost all the twenty-six southern Irish counties. By the end of the war, southern Ireland was virtually under martial law, resistant to conscription, in a state of near rebellion against the Crown and the Protestant ascendancy. Indians and Egyptians were likely to pay careful heed. The war left a legacy of a more isolated Britain, whose imperial role was already being swamped by wider transformations in the post-war world.

The continuity between war and peace was confirmed by Lloyd George's overwhelming electoral triumph at the elections of December 1918; he was acclaimed, almost universally, as "the man who won the war", as the most dominant political leader since Cromwell. In Ireland, Sinn Fein captured 73 seats out of 81 in the south: is representatives withdrew from Westminster and set up their own unofficial parliament or Dail in Dublin.

Socio-economic normality was being rapidly restored. Many of the war time controls and the state collectivism disappeared, major industries were returned to private hands. A financial policy to entail a deflationary approach was adopted, to ensure the return to the gold standard and to contract the note issue expanded so rapidly during the war. The Prime Minister, Lloyd George was seen as a social reformer anxious to build "a land fit for heroes". It was conceived a programme to extend health and spread universal unemployment insurance, and a programme for subsidized houses.

But soon it became clear that life was not to be restored to the same patterns. The loss of the foreign markets and the sale of overseas investments determined disruptive economic problems. From January 1922 an Irish Free State, consisting of the twenty-six Catholic counties of southern Ireland was created with just the six Protestant counties of Ulster in the north-east left within the United Kingdom. The government used tough methods, including emergency powers and the use of troops as strike breakers in dealing with national strikes by miners, railway men and many other workers (including police) in 1919-21. Thereafter the government failed to prevent massive unemployment from growing up and casting blight over the older industrial areas. The peace settlement was increasingly unpopular. The economist J.M. Keyness, in his book Economic Consequences of Peace became rapidly a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic as it showed conclusively that the reparations imposed on Germany would lead to its financial ruin and thereby to the weakening of European economy. Britain refused any longer to act as the "police man of the world". The empire might be larger than ever, but it must be accompanied by a withdrawal from commitments in Europe. There was a constant flux and upheaval in other spheres of public life as well.

In Wales and Scotland there were small movements of intellectuals, which suggested that the very unity of the kingdom could itself be threatened. The two nationalist parties were formed on the Irish model, Plaid Cymru in Wales in 1925 and the National Party of Scotland in 1928. In the later twenties, the land settled down into a pattern that endured until 1940s. The population continued to grow, if more slowly, but within it there were deep and growing contrasts, as younger writers, such George Orwell were later to emphasize. There were many housing developments in the form of suburban middle class estates. A larger proportion of the population emerged from the war with middle-class aspirations - home ownership; a quit family environment; more leisure pursuits (that were over a million cars in private hands by 1930 of which the most celebrated was the "Baby Austin"); domestic comforts and mechanical aids such a Hoovers. For junior managers, civil servants, schoolteachers, skilled workers and others, members of white collar administrative and professional groups that had expanded so dramatically between 1880 and 1918, the twenties were not such a bad time, with prices starting to fall, hoses more freely available on easy terms, and more leisure interests to pursue. Newer technologically-advanced industries were mushrooming, notably the modern car plants of Herbert Austin at Longbridge and William Morris at Cowley, both in Midlands.

Yet, for many other areas, it was a time of growing despair and disillusion. The countryside, for instance, was sunk in depression after the brief heady revival of the war years. The rural population steadily declined, especially in the more mechanised agricultural sector of the wheat growing areas of southern England. Prices of farm products fell; the level of rural incomes declined, "the green revolution" vastly enlarged the number of landowners in the 1918-26 periods, the greatest transformation in landholding since the Norman Conquest. Along with damp, unsanitary housing and poor schools and public services went appalling figures of child illness and mortality, tuberculosis for the middle-aged, lung disease for miners, physical deformity for the old. There was a markedly lower life expectancy in the older industrial regions of the north, Wales and Scotland, contrasted with the country towns and spas of English south-east and the west Midlands. Yet this growing social division occasioned surprisingly little revolt or protest at that time. It was because the warm solidarity of the working class world which generated its own values, culture and entertainment, even during the depression years. The relics of that period - the working-men's clubs, and libraries; the vibrant world of miner's lodge, the choir and brass bands; the credit base provided by the "co-op' in working class communities - testify to the strength and optimism of working class life even in these gloomy years.

1.9. The Twentieth Century

The crash in the American Stock Exchange in October1929 followed by a downward spiral of trade, and unemployment, was beyond the reach of any government to correct. Beyond the worldwide forces of over- production and a slump in demand, there were factors peculiar to Britain alone. There was here an industrial structure unduly geared to a declining range of traditional industries, coal, steel, textiles, and shipbuilding. There was a history of low investment, over mining and inefficient work practices intensified by a culture that, for decades had elevated humane disciplines and gentlemanly virtues in place of business education or entrepreneurial skills. The entire industrial and manufacturing base contracted with extreme violence. There was no sign of recovery until 1935. The rigours of a "life on the dole" with all the hopelessness and helplessness that were implied had become one to which the Great British people had become resigned or immune.

A variety of political nostrums were suggested, from the collectivism of the Socialist League and later the Left Book Club, to the pure sectarianism of the tiny Communist Party who claimed to see the future working in Soviet Union. On the radical rights, Sir Oswald Mosley tried to create a British variant of Fascism with a mixture of corporate planning and anti-Semitism. Meanwhile the veteran socialist writers, Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells in their different ways promoted the cause of a planned antiseptic scientific Utopia. After a long political turmoil, Chamberlain was the Prime Minister that led the recovery of the economy on the earlier part of the decade with much investment in housing and in consumer durables, and new affluence for advanced industrial zones. Emigration from older regions such as South Wales, Durham Cumberland and Scotland was balanced by new growth in the suburbs and centres of light industries. There were benefits for farmers in the form of milk and other marketing schemes and production quotas, and advantages for urban and suburban residents such as improved transportation (the London Tube), extended gas and electricity services and cheap housing. In 1932 a Trade Conference held in Ottawa settled the new principles of a commercial system of tariffs and imperial preferences due to last until the 1970s.

The thirties were a time of very low inflation, cheap private housing and a lot of growing choice for consumers. The motor car industries, electrical, chemical and textile concerns continued to thrive. An expansion of the service and professional sectors of the white-collar population was noticed; in the growing suburban communities there appeared smart shopping precincts, many new cinemas and football grounds. The semi-detached middle class housing stretched along the arterial roads and bit deep in the surrounding countryside, unhampered by environmental control designed to preserve the "green belts" Britain displayed in the thirties a surprising degree of stability in a European continent which saw totalitarianism engulf Germany, Italy and Austria and the French and Spanish republics cast into disarray. The social and cultural hierarchy changed very little. The monarchy retained its esteem by responding subtly to marginal changes in the outlook of the mass democracy

Britain, in the thirties, showed being a land at peace with itself. But the mood began to change abruptly in 1937 through an external impact of foreign affairs. The public mood in the early thirties remained a passive one, even after the advent of Hitler in Germany in January 1933. Hiller marched into the Rhineland in early 1936, in direct contravention of the Versailles settlement. But only a few voices, like the isolated and unpopular Winston Churchill called for a military response. Earlier, the British public had generally endorsed the appeasement policy of the Foreign Office following the Italian invasion of Abyssinia- elected Republican government was subjected to invasion by a right wing Nationalist force led by General Franco, with later armed assistance from Italy and Germany, the British government adhered rapidly to "non-intervention", even if this meant the eventual downfall of democracy in Spain.

At various levels, however, the public mood suddenly changes. Even the government began to turn its mind to the need to overhaul the national defenses, especially in the air. A new fighter-based air force was in the making, backed up by the latest technology invested in "radar' and other anti-craft and defense systems. Through men like Tizard and Lindemann, the voice of scientific innovation was heard in the corridors of power. By 1937 the rearmament programme was visibly under way. Jewish refugees from Germany brought the reality of Hitler's regime and of anti-Semitism home to British opinion. Even on the Labour left, trade union leaders turned vigorously against neo-pacifist Labour politicians who denied armed assistance to trade union and labour groups crushed in Fascist Germany and Austria.

The German advance in 1938, the seizure of Austria and the subsequent threat to Czechoslovakia, ostensibly on the Sudeten Germans in the Western fringe of Bohemia, produced a national crisis of conscience. Chamberlain responded with managerial decisiveness. Rearmament was stepped up and new negotiations began with the engineering trade unions to try to build up munitions and aircraft. When Hitler took the fateful step of invading Poland in September, 1939, Chamberlain announced in a broadcast the next day that Britain had declared war to Germany. When war broke out in 1939 there was a unanimity that pervaded all regions and classes.

As in 1914 the war was represented publicly as a crusade on behalf of oppressed nationalities and persecuted races. The broad imperatives survived to create a new consensus. As twenty years earlier, Britain regained its sense of unity and national purpose amidst the challenge and turmoil of total war. During the so called "phony war" period down to April 1940, the fighting seemed remote, almost academic. Then, in April the cold war hotted up. The German invaded Norway, scattering before them the British naval and military forces at Norwich. Soon afterwards, the Netherlands and Belgium were overrun and the French army broke up in disorderly retreat. The security of the British Isles themselves was now under clear and pressing threat.

Winston Churchill emerged as a wartime Prime Minister, with Labour and Liberals both joining the government. The extent to which Britain was prepared to defend itself in military reserves, the "home guard" of civilians was later to be effectively parodied as a "dad's army'" of amateurs muddling through with good humour. But the real battle lay in the air, where the reserves of Spitfire and Hurricane fighter aircraft were rapidly built up. From mid August onwards the German Luftwaffe launched wave after wave of blitz attacks, first on British airfields and aircraft factories, later on London and other ports and major cities. Almost miraculously civilian morale and national defenses stood firm against terrifying bombardments. The later course of the war on land, and more especially on sea and in air, had a major long-term effect on the international and imperial status of Great Britain. It had begun to being a traditional European conflict to preserve nation al security and the balance of power in the West. This aspect of the war reached a successful outcome by the summer of 1941, with the frustration of German threats to invade Britain.

However, the war demonstrated wider, imperial themes. From being initially a conflict to preserve Western and Central Europe from the aggressive menace of German Fascism, the war rapidly turned into a broader effort to sustain the Commonwealth and empire as they had endured over the decades. The white dominions - Australia, New Zeeland, Canada and far more hesitantly - South Africa - lent immediate support in term of raw materials and armed naval and other assistance.

The entry of the Soviet Union into the war in June 1941 and even more that of the United States in December 1941, following the Japanese assault on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, ensured that the war remained a worldwide one, fought in every continent and every ocean, and that the cosmic structure of the British Empire would come under acute threat.

In the Far East, also, the war involved desperate efforts to shore up the empire at its base. The invasion of the Japanese through China into Indo China and the Dutch East Indies, including the capture of all the American bases in the Philippines, led Churchill to place the Far East, with the approach to the Indian subcontinent, even higher than the Middle East in the military priorities.

The rapid Japanese advance through Malaya and the surrender of the British army in February 1942, represented the landmark in the fall of the empire. Henceforth, Australia and New Zeeland were to look to the USA form protection in the Pacific rather than to the imperial mother country. By late 1944 the British position in eastern Asia and the Pacific, even with the loss of Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong was still a powerful one, even if dependent on American land and naval assistance.

At last in June 1944, with the naval invasion of France from the Normandy beach-head by Allied forces under the command of Eisenhower & Montgomery, the war again assumed a European aspect. In the end it was a rapid and triumphant campaign. It was the general Montgomery who formally received the unconditional surrender of the German forces at Lunenburg Heath on May 9, 1945. Hitler himself had committed suicide a few days earlier. Japan also surrendered on August 15 after two atomic bombs had wrought huge devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 10,000 people.

The most satisfying fact of all was that casualties were so much lighter in the years of the Second World War, than in the four years of slogging trench warfare in 1914-1918. This time a total of 270,000 servicemen were lost in six years as well as over 60,000 civilians killed on German air raids. The campaign had been more peripheral, more episodic and in the end, far more effectively conducted on a technical basis.

The Americans were concerned at wartime conferences and at the Potsdam peace conference of July August 1945, to speed up the process of decolonization. Churchill was led to observe anxiously that he had not become the King's minister, or fought a bloody war for six years, in order to achieve the dissolution of the British Empire. But already his outlook was being overtaken by events.

This war clearly expressed a profound spirit of egalitarianism of a type previously unknown in British history at any period. George Orwell felt that a social revolution was taking place. The ration books, gas masks, identity cards and other wartime afflicted the people equally & implied a mood of "fair shares". So did the communal sufferings during the blitz. A notable impact was achieved by the evacuees, the school children removed from London, Birmingham, Liverpool and other cities to take refuge in rural communities in England and Wales. Large sections of the nation got to know each other. The medical and food supplies for the evacuated children of the urban slums meant a great improvement in their physical and mental well-being. For their patients, war miraculously meant that full employment was restored, after the terrible decay of the thirties. Mood of equality of sacrifice, novel questions began to be asked about public policy. A scheme of comprehensive social security financed from central taxation, including maternity benefits and child allowances, universal health and unemployment insurance, old age pension and death benefits. It was the time of the provision from the "cradle to the grave".

In 1945, it began a long overdue process of reversing the economic decline by diversifying and modernizing the economic infrastructure. It was also outlined a non dynamic approach to town planning with "green belt" provisions around major conurbations, new controls over land use and "new towns" to cater for the oversight of older cities.

The domestic budgetary policies and the external financial arrangements, including the attempt to revitalize international trade and currency was made through the Breton Woods agreement, the nationalization of major industries and the Bank of England, the levy on inherited capital; the salaried state directed medical profession was now proposed by both conservative and liberal circles.

A chimed feeling, with a noticeable mood of political radicalism, made Britain move more rapidly to the left than in any other period of history. Beyond the confines of Westminster and Whitehall, it was clear that the public was becoming more radical. There was a widespread public enthusiasm for the Red Army, very popular after Stalingrad and the advance against Berlin. Even in the armed forces, so it was murmured, left wing or novel ideas were being bandied about in current affairs groups and discussion circles. Reconstruction then was a far more coherent and deep rooted concept as the war came to its close.

The Labour Government of 1945-51, launched a new kind of consensus, a social democracy, based in a mixed economy, and had a welfare state which took Britain well enough through the difficult post war transition and endured in its essence for another generation or more.

Major industries and institutions were brought into public ownership - coal, railway, road transport, civil aviation, gas, electricity, cable and wireless, the Bank of England. Over 20 percent of the nation's industry was taken into the "public sector". Corporate private capitalists were replaced by boards of corporate public bureaucrats. The health service was implemented as a salaried system by which the doctors were made state employees and the sale of the private practices was abolished. Notable measures included the national insurance system introduced in 1946 that meant the new drive for late subsidized "council" houses, old age pensions, the raising of the school leaving age and child allowances. The underlying principles of publicly-supported, comprehensive welfare state survived largely unscathed.

Britain faced a huge postwar debt, which led to severe imbalance of trade, devaluation of the sterling against the dollar, difficulties in the balance of payments, rationing of food, clothing, petrol and many domestic commodities. The trade unions were generally permitted to develop their freedoms and collective bargaining powers. The stability of the domestic scene was much assisted by the general quietude of external policy. In 1945, Britain was still a great power, one of the "Big Three" at the international peace conferences. This aspect was preserved up to Moscow Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

However, international position was qualified by the gradual but necessary retreat from empire that the post war period witnessed.

The granting of self-government to India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) by the Attlee government was the transfer of power. The process of decolonization was concluded in the fifties, when the territories in West and East Africa, Kenya & Cyprus received their independence. In Southern Africa, the eventual breakup of the Central African Federation in 1963, gave independence for Northern Rhodesia, (Zambia), and Nyasaland (Malawi) also. A scattered handful of territories - British Honduras, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, and Aden, Fiji were still under British control in the '60s, but the Empire day disappeared from the calendar and the king ceased to be an European of India. An American politician, Daniel Moynihan could write about the new prestige of Britain for having liberated so large a proportion of the world's population without bitterness.

From 1949 the United States of America and Britain were strategically and geopolitically in NATO. Another organization SEATO, followed, for South-East Asia followed on shortly. The British prided themselves that this meant an equal "special relationship" between the English speaking peoples.

Nearer homes there were attempts from 1947 onwards to form a political and economic union of Western Europe. The British governments were suspicious, if not openly hostile; as they felt that few natural ties link the nations across the Channel. The first attempt to join the Common Market in 1963 was rebuffed by the President of France. Charles de Gaulle. The Euro enthusiasm was oriented clearly against the tide of public opinions.

In spite of the fact that the self-contained British society was worked by a slow rate of growth and falling productivity and the class division and inequalities prevented the modernizing of a "stagnant society", it was to be noticed that homes became better furnished, an increasing number of families had their own cars and could also afford a decent holiday on the sunny Mediterranean coast.

The young working class changed their lifestyle and the pop culture was expansive. Other social changes were assisted by liberal-oriented politicians. Sexual offences, homosexual and otherwise, were less liable to the rigours of the law, and abortion along with the pills and other easy obtainable contraception offered scope for endless sexual indulgence; there were far more divorces and one-part families.

As from the education point of view, many new universities sprang up, while older universities were much expanded, that diluted the quality of the educational process, as some voices complained. Student rebellions and protests, familiar in France or in America, against nuclear disarmament and the American war in Vietnam, briefly fared up in British campuses. The young were finding the values of consumerism and conformism unappealing in a world whose ecology was being disturbed or whose very existence was threatened by terrible weapons. Young people in Wales or Scotland generated a tide of nationalist protests as they did not enjoy fully the economic growth of the 50s. The Scottish nationalists complained that the very title of Elizabeth II was a misnomer in their country, and in Wales there was the added theme of an ancient language and culture threatened with extinction in the unequal battle against "anglicized" mass culture.

The artificial State kept in being by the control of the Protestant majority, Northern Ireland, was in disarray, led to powerful civil rights movement on behalf of the Roman Catholic minority.

By the 1970's, it was clear that the economic problems of Britain was having were having far more general consequences, as its economic decline continued in comparison with almost all other Western European countries. Unions became more and more assertive in their "right-to-work" demonstrations, in protests against cuts in public spending or the high rate of unemployment. The religious animosities between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Ireland were aggravated by the most acute rate of unemployment. The endemic violence stretched across the sea in the form of terrifying bomb attacks on English cities, and even assassinations of politicians. The troubles afflicting the black communities living in poor ghettos of large cities were more allarming.

Although after much diplomatic infighting, Britain entered the European Common Market in 1973. Unique referendum in 1975 saw a large majority recording its support for British membership, the British attitude. Towards the Common Market continued to be governed by hostility. A colourful indication of at least a partial retreat from isolationism was the building of a high-speed rail tunnel under the English Channel to link Britain and France, a tunnel that became operational in 1993. The Commonwealth ties were becoming more and more intangible too. The agreement with China by which the British would withdraw from the Hong-Kong within 8 years, confirmed the irreversible retreat from the Empire.

Suddenly, in the 80s an important change in the economic landscape occurred. The balance of payments suddenly moved into a large and continuing surplus. The technological wonders of oil, electronics, aerospace of Concorde, the high-speed train and the computerized microchip age, suggested that the native reserves of innovation and scientific ingenuity had not run dry. The British economy began to expand & reached a rate of 4 percent growth in early 1987.

A notable event was the so called "Big Bang" in the City of London (27 October 1986) which replaced the age old spectacle of jobbers milling on the Stock Exchange floor with an almost invisible, highly sophisticated computer-based network for dealers. This was the sign of the new internationalism of the capital market. Life suddenly appeared easier after the crisis of the seventies and early eighties: home ownership contributed to the welfare of the population. Conversely, the trade unions appeared to be declining in public esteem and even more in membership.

The experimentalism of the "permissive" years of the sixties was being followed by a new passion for traditional standards and values, commitment to work, to more conventional forms of sexual experience, to family life, to patriotism. In the 1990s, it remained a relatively neighborly society. Brits expressed constantly a deep sense of their history. Even in the turbulence of the later twentieth century, an awareness of the past came.

. Political System

The origins of the political institutions of kingship and an advisory council of prominent men in Great Britain trace back in the Saxon period, i.e. the fifth century AD until the Norman Conquest in 1066.

The royal control was strengthened in the period of the Norman ruling, but eventually it experienced difficulties in the time of King John (1199-1216) when he had to agree to a series of concessions by Magna Charta. It provided for the rights of feudal proprietors against the abuse of royal power, and it became the expression of the rights of the community against the Crown.

Parliament was first used officially in 1236 as a gathering of feudal barons and representatives of countries and towns, which the king summoned if extraordinary taxation was required. By the fifteenth century Parliament had acquired the right to make laws. The conflicting political interests between the monarchy that insisted on its divine right to rule, and the Parliament that claimed its legislative authority, led to the Civil War in 1642 that ended with the defeat of the Royalist armies and the execution of King Charles I in 1649. The country was proclaimed a republic and the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished.

After the death of Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, in 1660, the republican experience of Britain came to an end. King Charles II, the son of Charles I, was restored to the throne. But his successor, king James II, attempted to rule without the consent of the Parliament that made William of Orange (a grand son of Charles I and the husband of Mary, James II eldest daughter) to "secure the infringed liberties". While James II fled into exile, the Parliament in 1689 passed the Bill of Rights that made it impracticable for the Sovereign to ignore the Parliament. How ever, the monarch continued to be at the centre of executive power. To enable the Sovereign and Parliament to work together to carry on the government of the country, a group of ministers, or cabinet became the link between the executive and the legislature. Although the Sovereign appointed the members, they needed the support of the House of Commons to enable them to persuade Parliament to pass legislation and vote for taxation. In 1714, under the Hanoverian dynasty, the monarch ceased to attend the Cabinet meetings and to exercise executive power directly. The Cabinet was presided over by the Lord Treasurer, who came to be known as the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, who was appointed in 1841 to 1846. He was probably the first holder of his office to perform the role of a Prime Minister. Since the mid nineteenth century he has normally been the leader of the party with a majority in the House of Commons.

The Reform Act in 1832 changed the system of parliamentary representation, which dated from medieval times. The government reform system was completed in the early part of twentieth century by standardizing the qualifications for the adult right to vote, the House of Commons becoming a subject of direct popular control.

1.10.1. The British Constitution

The British Constitution, unlike the constitutions of most other countries, is not a single document, being the result of the historical development of political events.

It is made up of Statute law, common law and conventions. The last ones represent rules and practices which are not legally enforceable but they are considered indispensable to the working of government. The constitution is adaptable to the changing political environment, as it can be altered by Act of Parliament or by general agreement.

The Parliament is the legislative and the supreme authority, while the executive consists of:

The Government - the Cabinet and other ministers responsible for national policies;

Government departments, responsible for national administration;

Local authorities, responsible for many local services;

Public corporations, responsible for operating particular nationalized industries or other bodies, subject to ministerial control.

The judiciary determines common law and interprets statutes and is independent of both legislature and executive.

The Monarchy

United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy. Its system of government (often known as the Westminster system) has been adopted by other countries, such as Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and Jamaica. The constitution is uncodified, being made up of constitutional conventions, statutes and other elements. The monarchy is the oldest institution to govern the country, going back to at least the ninth century - four centuries before the parliament.

The present queen, Elisabeth II is herself descendant directly from King Egbert, who united England under his rule in 1829. In the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man a Lieutenant - Governor, represents the Queen. Today, the British Monarch is not only head of the state, but also an important symbol of national unity. The full royal title in Britain is "Elisabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and ob Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith". The title to the throne is derived partly from statute and partly from common law rules of descent. The hereditary principle upon which it was founded has always been preserved. Sons of the Sovereign have precedence over daughters in succeeding to the throne. When a daughter succeeds, she becomes Queen Regnant and has the same powers as a king. The consort of a king takes her husband's rank and style, becoming Queen. The constitution does not give any special rank or privileges to the husband of a Queen Regnant, although in practice he fills an important role in the life of the nation, as does the Duke of Edinburgh.

Under the Act of Settlement of 1700, which formed part of the Revolution Settlement, following the events of 1688, only Protestant descendants of a grand daughter of James I of England and XI of Scotland (Princess Sophia, the Electress of Hanover) are eligible to succeed. The order of succession can be altered only by common consent of the countries of the Commonwealth.

The Sovereign succeeds to the throne as soon as his or her predecessor dies: there is no interregnum. He or she is proclaimed at Accession Council, to which all members of the Priory Council are summoned. The Lords Spiritual and Temporal, the Lord Major and Alderman and other leading citizens of the City of London are also invited.

The Coronation ceremony takes place after a convenient interval at West minister Abbey in London. Representatives of the House of Parliament and of all the great public organizations in Britain are invited. The Prime Minister, representatives of the Commonwealth nations and other countries are also invited.

The Sovereign is, according to the law, the head of the executive, an integral part of legislature, head of the judiciary, the commander - in-chief of all the armed forces of the Crown and the "supreme governor" of the established Church of England. The Sovereign acts on the advice of her ministers. The Majesty's Government in the name of the Queen governs Britain.

In spite of the trend of giving powers directly to ministers, the present Queen still takes part in the government acts. These include summoning, proroguing (discontinuing until the next session without dissolution) and dissolving Parliament, giving the Royal Assent to Bills passed by Parliament (promulgate). The Sovereign also formally appoints many important office holders, including government ministers, judges, and officials in armed forces, governors, diplomats, bishops and some other senior clergy, of the Church of England. She is also involved in pardoning people convicted of crimes and in conferring peerages, knighthoods and other honours, such as:

The Order of Garter

The Order of Thistle

The Order of Merit

The Royal Victorian Order.

As a head of the State, the Sovereign has also power to declare war and make peace, to recognize foreign states and governments to conclude treaties and to annex or cede territories. She still plays an important role in the working of government as she holds meetings of the Priory Council, gives audiences to her ministers and officials - in Britain and overseas, receives account of Cabinet decisions, reads dispatches and signs state papers. She is also consulted on every aspect of national life and she must show complete impartiality.

The royal functions can be performed by a regent if the Queen is totally or partially incapacitated. The regent would be the Queen's eldest son, the Prince of Wales, and then those, in order of succession to the throne, who are of age. The Queen may also delegate certain royal functions to the Counselor of State but he may not, for instance, dissolve Parliament (except on the Queen's instructions), nor create peers.

Until 1760 the Sovereign had to provide for payment of all government expenses, including the salaries of officials and the expenses of the royal palaces and households. These were met from hereditary revenues, mainly income from Crown lands and some other sources granted to the monarch by Parliament. When the income from these sources eventually proved inadequate, King George III turned over to the Government most of the hereditary revenue in 1760. In return he received an annual grant from which he continued to pay the royal expenditure of a personal character and also the salaries of government officials and certain pensions.

Today the Sovereign has an essentially ceremonial role restricted in exercise of power by convention and public opinion.

1.10.3. Royal Pomp

Changing of the Guard

London is a royal city and tourists from all over the world come here to attend the royal ceremonies Every day a New Guard of 30 guardsmen marches down The Mall to Whitehall where it replaces the Old Guard with due ceremony in the Front Yard.

The responsibility of guarding the Sovereign by the Household Troops (as they were known at that time) dates back to the time of Henry VII (1485-1509). The Buckingham Palace became the official Royal residence when Queen Victoria acceded to the throne in 1837. The soldiers of the Buckingham Palace Guard are some of the best soldiers in the British Army, and they have fought in virtually every major area of conflict with great distinction since the 17^th century. They also take an active role in protecting their Sovereign and at night, they patrol the guards of both Buckingham Palace and St. James's Palace.

The State Opening of the Parliament

Each year, usually in October or November, The Queen accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh and travelling in the State Coach formally opens the new session of the Parliament. Before the Royal procession leaves, the yeoman of the Guard (the oldest of the royal bodyguards) would search the cellars of the Houses of Parliament. The State Opening of Parliament is the main event of the parliamentary year and occurs when Parliament reassembles after a general election. It marks the start of the parliamentary session and large crowds are expected to watch and hear the Queen's Speech given in the presence of the members of Houses, the House of Commons and the Hose of Lords.

Trooping of the Color

The Royal celebration of the queen or the king of the United Kingdom is officially celebrated on the 2^nd Saturday in June, irrespective of his of her birthday date. This traditional ceremony is called the Trooping of the Colour and dates back to the early 18^th century.

It is a big parade with brass bands and hundred of soldiers from the Horse Guards regiment marching in front of the Queen. The parade is open by the regiment's flag or colour and the Guards are trooping the colour. The route from Buckingham Palace to the Whitehall is watched by thousands of spectators eagerly waiting to see the Queen heading the procession and dressed in uniform.

The Queen is greeted by a royal salute and carries out an inspection of the troops. After the bands have performed a musical "troop", the escorted regimental colour is carried down the ranks. The Queen rides back to Buckingham Palace at the head of her Guards and the troops then return to barracks.

There are five separate regiments comprising the Guards Division, all wearing tunics and bearskins: the Grenadiers, the Coldstream, the Scots Guards, the Irish Guard and the Youngest regiment of the Welsh Guards. The Guards also perform guard duties at Buckingham Palace, St. James's Palace and Clarence House.

Other Royal Occasions

The present-day Maundy Ceremony bears little relationship to the original rites from which it originates. The original Maundy service was the washing of the feet of the poor, and its origins are to be found in Jesus' washing of the feet of his Disciples at the Last Supper. This ceremony is known as the Eucharist dating back to the 5^th century and referred to as "pedilavium" (the feet washing". It followed the Holy Communion on Maundy Thursday. The night of Maundy Thursday is the Night on which Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane betrayed Jesus.

The word Maundy is derived from the Latin word: "mandatum" meaning the "command" which Christ gave to his disciples to love one another. The opening words of the Maundy ceremony are part of the anthem "mandatum novum do vobis" sung in the Roman Catholic Churches. The Queen gives the Maundy money in Canterbury Cathedral every year, on the Maundy Thursday.

For 700 years, the Chief Yeoman Warder has secured the Tower of London each night. Accompanied by the Escort he performs the traditional ceremony of her Majesty's Keys. The ceremony consists of locking the gates of the Tower of London when the clock strikes 10. Then the Chief Yeoman Warder hands the keys to the care of the Resident Governor at The Queen's House.

The Beefeaters are the soldiers whose real name is Yeoman Warders of the Tower. Their clothes are those of the royal guards of the year 1500. Their duty is to guard the Tower of London and the Crown Jewels, and to help the visitors, as well.

The Order of the Garter Ceremony has a long history. King Edward III started the Order in the 14^th century. At that time the order included 24 knights, but nowadays the knights of the Order are no longer soldiers. The Queen is the Sovereign of the Order of the Garter, but she is not the only one royal person. There are also other members of the family.

The new appointments to the Order of the Garter are usually announced on St. George's Day, April 23^rd, but the ceremony takes place in June, on the Monday of Royal Ascot week. The knights of the Garter gather in the Throne Room at Windsor Castle, where the new knights, after taking the oath, are invested with the Order insignia. They wear the blue velvet robes of the Order (with the badge of the Order)- St. George Cross) and black velvet hats with white feathers that are an important part of Britain's oldest traditions.

The Constable and the Governor of Windsor Castle (considered the home place of the Order) and the military Knights of Windsor lead the procession.

The Lord Major's Show is an old ceremony also. As every year the Londoners choose a Lord Major, they come to see him in his coach, which takes him to the Mansion House during a long colourful procession. It is also London biggest parade attended by many people wearing costumes and acting stories from London's history.

9.3. Parliament

In medieval times the King was expected to cover the royal private or public expenses from his own revenue. But in case of war, the king needed extra resources that could be covered from an aid. The members of the Great Council, meeting several times a year, had to find extra sources to grant the necessary aid. But these extra sources being not sufficient, several kings summoned to their Great Council, not only the great feudal magnates, but also representatives of counties, cities and towns in order to get their assent to extraordinary taxation. The Great Council came to include those who were summoned by name (those who, broadly speaking, were to form the House of Lords, and those who were representatives of communities - the commons. Together with the Sovereign, the gathering became shown as "Parliament"- the term originally meant a meeting for parley or discussion).

By the middle of the fourteenth century, as they realised the strength of their position, the House of Commons pledged that all money granted were approved by the House of Commons.

Later, in the fifteenth century, they gained the right to participate in giving their request - their Bills - the form of law. The subsequent development led to Parliament securing its position as the supreme legislative authority. The three powers that represent the British Parliament are the Queen, the House of Lords, and the elected House of Commons. All of them are normally required for legislation but they usually meet together only for symbolic occasions.

The Parliament can legislate for Britain as a whole or for only one part of the country, or even for territories that are Crown dependency only such as the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man. It can pass or change any law or overturn established conventions or turn them into law. In carrying out these functions the Parliament brings relevant facts and issues before the electorate. Although the international treaties and agreements are a royal prerogative, exercised on the advice of the Government, and they are not a subject to parliamentary approval, by custom, Parliament is informed about them.

The activity of the Parliament is divided into sessions that last for one year. There are "adjournments" at night, at weekends, at Christmas, Easter and the late Spring Bank Holiday and a summer break starting in late July or Early August. At the start of each session the Queen delivers her speech and outlines the Government's policy and proposes programme. The Parliamentary sessions end by prorogation that brings to an end nearly all-parliamentary business: public Bills that have not been passed by the end of the session are lost.

The Parliament consists of the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

The participants in the House of Lords are: the Lords Spiritual (the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Bishops of London, Durham and Winchester and the 21 next most senior diocesan bishops of the Church of England) and the Lords Temporal (all hereditary peers and peeresses of England, Scotland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, life peers created to assist the House in its judicial duties - Lords of Appeal or law lords and other life peers). Hereditary peerages carry a right to sit in the House, provided that holders establish their claim and are aged 21 years or over. However, anyone succeeding to a peerage may, within 12 month of succession, disclaim that peerage for his or her lifetime. Disclaimants lose their right to sit in the House, but gain the right to vote and stand as candidates at parliamentary elections.

The Sovereign creates peerages on the advice of the Prime Minister. They are usually granted in recognition of service in politics or other walks of life because one of the political parties wishes to have the recipient in the House of Lords. The House also provides a place in Parliament for people who offer useful advice, but do not wish to be involved in party politics. Peers attending the House have no salary for their parliamentary work, but can claim for travelling expenses for attending the House.

Lord Chancellor is the one who chairs the House his place being on a woolsack (a large cushion stuffed with wool from several Commonwealth countries, as a tradition originating in the medieval times, when the wealth source of the country was mainly the wool). The Chairman and the Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees are Lords, but receive salaries as officers of the House.

The Clerk of the Parliaments is a permanent officer responsible for the records of proceedings and for making known to the public the Acts of Parliament.

The Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, who is also Serjeant - at - Arms in attendance upon the Lord Chancellor, is responsible for security, accommodation and services in the House of Lords', part of the Palace of Westminster. The Yeoman Usher is Deputy Serjeant - at - Arms and assists Black Rod in his duties.

The House of Commons is elected by universal adult suffrage and consists of 651 members of Parliament. The chief officer of the House of Commons is the Speaker, elected by MP's to preside over the House. Other officers include the Chairman of Ways and Means and two deputy chairmen, who act as Deputy Speakers. They are elected by the House on the nomination of the Government but are drawn from the opposition as well as from the government party.

People that are over 18, citizens of Commonwealth countries, and Irish Republic resident in Britain are entitled to vote. They can be subject of disqualification when they are mentally disordered or sentenced to prison convicted within the previous five years of corrupt or illegal election practices.

The main responsibilities of the Parliament and the Government are the changes needed of the normal legislative process. Draft laws take the form of Parliamentary Bills. The public ones were related to the public policy and people or organizations outside Parliament usually promote the Private ones and they are undergone certain procedures. Before any government Bill is drafted, there is considerable consultation with professional bodies, voluntary organizations and other agencies interested in the subject. Both Houses, through a similar process, normally pass bills. Thus, it is given a first reading and a second reading committee is settled. The Bill is then referred to a standing committee for detailed examination.

A bill starting in the Lords is then sent to the Commons for all its stages there, then it follows the "guillotine", that is the Government is the one to pass it as a timetable motion. The Bill is then sent to the Queen for loyal Assent, after which it is part of the law of the land and known as an Act of Parliament.

Her Majesty's Government is the body of Ministers responsible for the administration of national affairs. The Queen appoints the Prime Minister, and the Queen on the recommendation of the Prime Minister appoints all other ministers.

They represent both Houses, but the Lord Chancellor is always a member of the House of Lord. He holds a special position, as both a minister with departmental function and the head of judiciary.

The composition of governments can vary both in member and in titles of some affairs. New ministerial offices may be created, others can be abolished, and functions can be transferred from one minister to another.

The position of the Prime Minister became known during the eighteenth century and it derives from the power of the House of Commons to appoint and dismiss ministers. He presides over the Cabinet, is responsible for the allocation of functions among ministers and informs the Queen at regular meetings of the general business of the Government. The official residence of the Prime Minister is on 10, Downing Street, central London.

The members of the Cabinet exercise its functions as a group of party representatives, depending upon majority support in the House of Commons. Its members meet in private and its proceedings are confidential. They are bound by their oath as Privy Counselors not to disease information about its proceedings, although after 30 years Cabinet papers may be made available for inspection in the Public Record Office, at Kew, Surrey. A great deal of work is carried on through the committee system.

The local authority system can be traced back to Saxon times, but the first comprehensive system of local councils was established in the late nineteenth century. Local authorities' powers and duties are conferred on them by Parliament, or by measures taken under its authority. England and Wales (outside Greater London) are divided into 53 counties, sub-divided into 36 districts. County councils provide large-scale services, while district councils are responsible for the more local ones.

Greater London is divided into 32 boroughs, each of which has a council responsible for local government in its area; in addition, there is the Corporation of the City of London. Some services require a statutory authority over areas wider than the individual boroughs and districts: waste regulation and disposal, police and fire services, including civil defense and public transport. Joint authorities composed of elected councillors nominated by the borough or district councils run all of them.

In addition to the two - tier local authority system in England, there are over 8,000 parish councils or meetings. The may provide and manage local facilities such as allotments and village halls and may act as agents for other district council functions. The also provide a forum for discussion of local issues.

Institutions and political life in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland

England is predominantly a lowland country but the Pennine Chain, the Cambrian Mountains and the Yorkshire moor lands. Cornwall, Devon and Somerset in the South-west are considered uplands. The central southern England is characterised by the downs-low chalk hill ranges.

The domestic affairs of England are not centrally administrated by any government minister or department in contrast to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. But a number of government departments in England cover some aspects of affairs in Wales and Scotland.

England has 524 members of Parliament in the House of Commons belonging to Conservative Labour and Liberal parties. The Conservatives supported by the suburban and rural areas have a large majority of the parliamentary seats in the southern half of England and in East Anglia. The industrialized areas usually support the Labour Party.

Local government is administered through a two-tier system of counties subdivided into districts. There are 32 single-tier borough authorities in London and six metropolitan counties in other regions of England. The legal system comprises a historic body of conventions known as "common low" since the Norman Conquest that places a great reliance on precedent, and the "equity lows" that derives from the practice of petitioning the King's Chancellor in cases not covered by common low.

England is also governed by European Community legislation.

The main link between local authorities and central government in England is the Department of the Environment, although other department such as the Department for Education and the Home Office are concerned with various local government functions.

Most of the 38 members of the Parliament, representing Wales are supported by the Labour, Conservative and Plaid Cymru Party. The Secretary of State for Wales, who is a member of the Cabinet, has wide-ranging responsibilities relating to the economy, education, welfare services and the provision of amenities. The headquarters of the administration is the Welsh Office in Cardiff, represented also in London. Local government is exercised through a system of elected authorities similar to that in England, and the legal system is identical with the English one.

As for the government of Scotland, separate Acts of Parliament are passed when necessary. The House of Commons has 72 seats for the elected Scottish Members that belong to the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat Parties.

The Secretary of State for Scotland is also a member of the cabinet and he works through the Scottish Office placed in Edinburgh and another office in London. The local government operates similarly with the ones of England and Wales, although it presents some differences that are based on some other European legal systems having their origins in the Roman Law.

1.13. Education in Great Britain

In England education aims to develop and raise fully the abilities of individuals, both young and old for their own benefit and that of the society. The Government aim to make further and higher education more widely accessible and more responsive to the needs of the economy and to achieve the best possible return from the resources invested in education service, by raising the standards at all levels of ability. The increase of the parental choice of schools and the improvement of partnership between parents and school is meant to meet the needs of the society from education and training point of view.

Compulsory schooling takes place between the age of 4 or 5 and 16. Some provision is made for children under school age, and many pupils remain at school beyond the minimum leaving age. The improvement of the curriculum in the late years made possible the development of the skills required for adult life and work in a technological age. Important steps have been taken for the improvement of teaching and for a better management of schools, by a better teacher training and appraisal. British education is also meant to be responsive to the needs of a multi-ethnic society, so it recruits pupils and students from the minorities and other under-represented groups. Further education and training is available for young pupils of the 16-17 years old to acquire high level of skills and expertise in different professional domains. The system of higher education is meant to maintain the high quality of the needs of the students and of the society, to keep the pace of development of the society, and to secure suitably qualified graduates of university courses for the employers. Over 20 per cent of the pupils are educated freely in schools financed from public funds and only a part of them go to independent schools that are financed by fees paid by their parents. Both public schools and independent ones are mostly mixed schools. The type of school is chosen freely by the attendants and parents or tutors as they publish yearly not only their admission criteria, National Curriculum assessment results and the destination of the school graduates, but also their truancy rates. They are also obliged to supply the parents or the tutors the findings of school inspection reports, a written annual report on their child's progress and information about the results of other pupils of the same age in school and about the possibilities to discuss the report with the teachers.

There are three main types of publicly supported schools: county schools that are maintained by local education authorities, voluntary schools, mostly established by religious denominations, and grant-maintained schools which have chosen to opt out of local education authority control after an affirmative ballot by parents. The schools are run by a governors appointed by the local education authority and a balance of teacher and parent representatives. They take decision regarding the allocation of the school budget, the interviewing and appointment of the staff, etc.

Nursery education has expanded in the late decades too. Many children attend pre-school playgroup that are organized in Associations. At the age of around 11 pupils pass from the primary to the secondary school. Most of them need no reference to their abilities or aptitudes, but, there are also children that go to grammar or secondary modern schools after some selection procedures: technology colleges that emphasize science, technology and business understanding, secondary schools specialized in science, music or modern languages. Secondary schools can establish partnerships between the Government and private sponsors and employers. Graduates are supported by their school or college to reach the agreed target skills and abilities and employers undertake to provide jobs to those attaining the targets. All the schools are opened to inspection. If they fail in giving pupils an acceptable standard of education, new governors are appointed to manage the school, or even to bring the school under a new management until its performance reach a satisfactory level.

Many of schools and training providers offer bursaries to help pupils from less well-off families. Special educational needs comprise learning difficulties of all kinds, including mental and physical disabilities which hinder or prevent learning. Teachers are appointed by local educational authorities or school governing bodies and the pupil-teacher ratio is 17 to 1.

The National Curriculum is meant to meet the needs of the pupils and the new era of technology. It consists of the core subjects of English, mathematics and science, as well as history, geography, technology, music, art, physical education, and a foreign language. Schools must also provide religious education and a daily act of collective worship. Its syllabus is according to the Christian traditions, but it also covers the teaching of the other main religions represented in the country. But children can be withdrawn from religious education classes and from collective worship.

The technical and vocational education is financed and administered by the Department of Employment so that the school curriculum relates also to the working environment. The graduates of the secondary education are provided with the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) after five years leading to more advanced education and training. According to the grade and the number of subjects attended, the graduates are rewarded by different categories of certificates aiming to secure a reasonably wide choice of qualifications.

1.13.1. Higher Education

In the United Kingdom there are 79 universities, including the Open University. They enjoy a complete academic autonomy: they appoint their own staff, decide which students to admit, provide their own courses and award their own degrees. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the Scottish universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Oxford is older than Cambridge, more worldly, more philosophical, classical and theological. Cambridge is more isolated, more theatrical, and more scientific. Cambridge has a more self-contained intellectual class, fortified by tradition of Darwin, Keynes, Wedgwood and more cut off from London; it is also much more radical and critical (with King's College now a left-wing strong-hold). But compared with the others, Oxbridge, these two stone cities, with their quadrangles, cloisters, damp staircases and punts, look very alike. Much of their attraction depends on the individual tutors; the peculiar rank of lecturers, the sense of being international centers, exposed to some of the best minds in the world but also the unchanging calendar of boat races, college balls and summer frolics.

Most of the Tory politicians have traditionally been educated at Christ Church, Oxford, founded in 1546 by King Henry XIII. Candidates to Oxford and Cambridge are largely self-selected, influenced by family and social background. The narrowness of the choice does not apparently lower the standards that are still much higher than elsewhere.

The ancient universities are strongly linked with the national politics by debating societies of the Oxford and Cambridge Union that can be regarded as an anteroom to parliament.

The elected union officials and the members train their politician traits as they go into public professions: - the bar, journalism or television and especially politics.

When Oxford and Cambridge universities were exclusively Anglican, all the other universities that were founded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries provided a liberal education and technical training for poorer students and dissenters of the provinces.

Admission to universities is by selection. First degree courses are mainly full-time and usually last three years, excepting the medical and veterinary ones that last four years.

Degrees titles vary according to the practice of each university. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the most common titles for a first degree are Bachelor of Arts (BA) or Bachelor of Science (BSc) and for a second degree Master of Arts (MA), Master of Science (MSc) and doctor of Philosophy (PhD). Universities have also programmes for professionals in education and health and social welfare services and for up-dating managers, scientists and technologists. Some of them are presented as multimedia courses or in the form of self-contained study packs.

Most of the university staff combines research with their teaching duties and about half of the post graduate students are engaged on research projects for industry that are encouraged by the Government.

The University of London has usually three times as many undergraduates as any other university, five hundred professors in its four independent colleges: University College in Gower Street, King's College in the Strand, the London School of Economics and the Imperial College of Science and Technology.

The poorer but the more ambitions people in Scotland, considered education as being necessary, so they founded their first universities in the fifteen century.

The British universities are much more diverse in their origin and characters and even in architecture than these of France or Germany. The University of Birmingham or Leeds originally "civic" universities were founded by mayors and corporations as symbols of local pride. The most scattered university is Wales, with components at Cardiff, Swansea, and Bangor. The contrast between the well endowed Oxford and Cambridge lowered in the sixties when many Victorian Universities were founded: they have more individual tutors, more halls of residence, better libraries. The University of Birmingham, for example, has moved from its blackened building of the Victorian Chamberlain tower to a central campus with shops, restaurants a skyscraper and halls of residence.

In the fifties, the Government became worried about the standards of higher education in Britain. A first break through was the new university of Keel in 1949 that provided a quite new kind of four years course, with its own degrees. Some other new universities began to be built, having real autonomy. But the first and most famous was Sussex that became the most evident rival for the prestige of Oxbridge. It was set up with the elitist emphasis of with an avant-garde intellectual character, with only 4.000 students and no intention of getting bigger.

Its seriousness was encouraged by a group of professors from Oxbridge who worked in a team. The maps of learning were re-drawn through interdisciplinary studies. One of the novelties introduced by this university in learning systems is the change from examination to mailing by assessment which came into force in 1971.

There are also some new universities that followed fast. The York University, opened in 1963 is more similar to Oxbridge ones by its conventionalism and degrees. The University of Essex at Colchester, opened in 1964 represents the heaviest concentration on social sciences; the University of Lancaster is economic studies, while the one of Kent at Canterbury is the most conservative and paternalistic. By 1970 the seven new universities - the "Shakespearian Seven" as they were called from their ducal-sounding names - made possible a number of around 122.000 students, that transformed the university perspectives: they had considerable social effects by mixing up upper - middle - class girls with working - class - men, interdisciplinary classes were promoted and became respectable.

The sudden industrial and technical revolution had little to do with universities in the 19^th century. The gap between science and the humanities was widened by the dichotomy between Anglican and non-conformists. The British felt the need of developing their higher education in techniques only after France and Germany set up their own politechniques and hochschulen for techno managers. The new British universities were designed to bring the new world of technology into the old world of liberal education. Gradually, laboratories and workshops have crept up on the libraries and lecture halls not only of the new universities, but also in the old ones. Glasgow, Manchester and London gradually became the pride of high studies in technology. The Imperial College in London was founded in 1907 by the merger of three London colleges and became a university of its own, with its world - wide reputation.

Although from the early nineteenth century onwards, a lot of modest colleges kept on developing to provide practical training for local students paid for by local councils and local industrialists, becoming accountable for the local needs, many of them grew up into important establishments of "techs", "polys" or "mechanics" providing the expertise for the industrial growing expansion as the governments became more and more conscious of the social dependence on technology, so that they felt the need to help.

In the meantime a new kind of university has appeared: the Open University that was called the "University of the Air" and considered as a part of the forthcoming "white-hot technological revolution". By its correspondence course it provides degrees much more cheaply than the conventional universities, even allowing for a huge rate of drop-outs. This main teaching instrument developed numerous study centers set up all over Britain summer schools at other universities. Similar distance learning programmes are set throughout Commonwealth.

As for the teachers, almost entrants complete a recognized course of initial teacher training. They are delivered by universities departments of education as well as higher education establishments. They qualify by taking four year degree of Bachelor of Education (BEd) honor degree. There is also two years course specialized in teaching for suitable qualified people. A Postgraduate Certificate of Education course can be taken by graduates. All entrants to the teaching profession should be graduates. They hold a degree containing two passes in the subjects they teach. Education and library boards have the statutory duty to ensure that teachers are equipped with the necessary skills to implement education reforms of the National Curriculum.

Science parks have been set up by higher education institutions in conjunction with industrial scientists and technologists to promote the development and commercial application of advanced technology. A network of regional technology centre links colleges and universities with local firms. They are encouraged to work jointly with higher education institutions on government-funded research relevant to industrial needs.

Economy

In the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Britain was the most developed industrialized country in Europe; its wealth was based on coalmining, on iron and steel industry, heavy machinery and textiles, on shipbuilding and on trade. The broad pattern of development was changed at the beginning of the twentieth century when industry weakened owing to fluctuation in the world trade, and due to the competition of other industrialized countries. Newer industries, such as pharmaceutical, artificial fibres, electrical equipment, car manufacture and a wide range of consumer goods developed in the South East and the West Midlands. The second half of the century, service industries have grown tremendously more than two thirds of the work force is employed in services industry.

There has also been an increase in high technology industry throughout the region, which is mainly placed in Cambridge Science Park that contains a minister of science - based companies and research organizations closely linked to the University.

Retailing activity has largely increased through large shopping centres built in the outskirts of the towns.

In financial and business services, London is one of the world's leading centres of banking, insurance and other financial services. The capital is also significant from media point of view: the national press is published here and the national radio and TV networks broadcast from here.

Agriculture is mainly represented by diary industry in west of England; sheep and cattle are reared in the hilly and moor land areas of the North and South West. Arable farming, pig and poultry farming and horticulture are concentrated in the east, south and in west midlands. The fishing ports are situated on the east coast and South West.

Plenty of energy resources are represented by coalfields and the offshore oil and gas reserves. The mineral deposits include sand, gravel and crushed rock used in construction; clay, sand, china clay in Cornwall, gypsum in a Midlands, North and South East.

Transportation is considerably supported by four long distance motorways linking London and the cities of the whole country, the London orbital routes and over 30 shorter motorways.

Railway transportation is also developed in inter-city services and provides new rolling stock for local services. The Cross Channel railway links Britain with the European rail system and also provides a vehicle shuttle service. The busiest international airport, Heathrow and Gatwick serve London but Manchester, Birmingham, Luton have their own local airports.

The following data will provide information concerning the employment of working people in different areas of activity:

Services 70.7

Manufacturing  21.7

Construction  4.3

Energy and water supply  9.0

Agriculture, forestry and fishing 1.3

The unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted is around 9.6 per cent.

1.15. Religion

Most of the religions of the world are present in Britain of today, since immigrants of different nationalities take advantage of the tolerance of the native population and of their beliefs and traditions. Large communities of Hindu, Jewish, Muslim or Sikh live all over the country. People are free to teach, worship and observe religions service without any interference. Legal religions entities may own property, run schools, hold public office. Religions freedom and the rights of non-conformism are granted by the Ecclesiastical jurisdiction Act (1677) and the Toleration Act (1688), believers of any religion have the same political rights.

The predominant religion, founded in 559 by St. Augustine is the Christian one. It became the established Church of England in 1549, in the Reformation period, when the form of worship was set out in the Book of Common Prayer. The State and the Sovereign uphold the Church, and it has to balance its privileges by filling certain obligations. The heads of the Church: the archbishops, bishops and deans are appointed by the Sovereign who is a member of the Church, at the advice of the Prime Minister, and all the clergy swear their allegiance to the Crown.

The Church of England has two provinces: the Canterbury and the one of York that is divided into dioceses, and they are also divided into parishes. It has ordained stipendiary priests and stipendiary women deacons. They render the religions service of baptising, confirmation, and solemnised marriages.

The ruling body is the Church of the General Synod that deals with missionary work inter-church relations, social questions, recommitment and training for the ministry in England and overseas, the care of church buildings, church schools supported by the state, and centres for training women in pastoral work.

The Anglican Communion is an autonomous one, comprising the Church of England (established), the Church of Wales, the Scottish Episcopal Church in Scotland and the Church of Ireland. The Anglican Bishop meets every ten years out Lambeth Conference for consultation. It is always presided by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Although the Conference has no executive authority, it enjoys considerable influence. The Anglican Consultative Council, an assembly of lay people, clergy and bishops meet every two or three year.

The Church of Scotland is a national, autonomous church, following the Scottish Reformation and legislations of the Scottish Parliament consolidated in the Treaty of Union in 1707 and the Church of Scotland Act 1921, the latter confirming its complete freedom in all spiritual matters. Its affairs are not subject to any civil authority. Its form of government is Presbyterian, that is, by ministers and elders, all of whom are ordained to office. Both men and women may join the ministry elected for the Kirk Session, and above it are the Presbytery and the Synod and finally the General Assembly. This meets annually under the presidency of an elected moderator, who serves for one year. The Lord High Commissioner represents the Sovereign at the General Assembly.

There are also some "Free Churches" broke away from the established Church of England and have developed their own traditions as Protestants. The largest of them is the Methodist Church originating in the eighteenth century following the evangelical revival under John Wesley (1703-1791). There are also Baptist Union of Great Britain (formed in 1912), of Scotland, Wales and Ireland that comprise organized groups of churches of Baptist religion.

In 1972, the Congregational Church in England and Wales (the oldest Protestant minority in Britain) and the Presbyterian Church of England merged into the United Reformed Church. In 1981 there was a further merger with the reformed association of the Churches of Christ.

There is also the church of Salvation Army founded in Britain by William Booth in 1865. It has social service centres, which range from hostels for homeless and prison chaplaincy that covers 96 prisons.

The Roman Catholic Church is also represented, although it disappeared after the Reform in the sixteenth century, as it was restored in 1850 in England and the Scottish Church in 1878. About one British citizen in ten claims to be a Roman Catholic. It attaches a great importance to the education of children. There are over 2,500 Catholic schools maintained out of public fund that also undertake social work.

There are also some Christian Churches in England or religions societies that are subject of faith of the British people.

Other Protestant Churches:

Unitarians

Free Christians

Pentecostalists:

Assemblies of God

Pentecostal Church

The Religions Society of Friends

The Christian Brethren:

Open Brethren

Close or Exclusive Brethren

The house church movement

Christian communities of foreign origin

Orthodox

Lutheran

Reformed

Armenian Church

Religious organisations originating in the United States in the last century:

The Jehovah's Witnesses

The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter - Day Saints (the Mormon Church)

The Christian Scientists

The Spiritualists

The Jewish community numbers nowadays about 300,000 being the scored the largest in Europe. The first Jews settled in the British Isles in the time of the Norman Conquest, but the present community dates from 1656 when they came from Spain and Portugal in a second wave. They are called Sephardim. The third wave came later from Germany and Eastern Europe, known as Ashkenazim. Most of the community acknowledge the authority of the Chief Rabbi and they are orthodox. The Sephardic Orthodox group follow their own spiritual leader the Haham. There is also the Masorti movement, founded in 1840, and the Liberal and Progressive movement that started in 1901. About one in three Jewish children attend Jewish schools, some of which are supported by public funds. Some agencies care for elderly and handicapped people:

Sephardim (Chief Rabbi) - 1656

Ashkenazim (Haham)

Masorti movement - 1840

Liberal and Progressive movement - 1901.

As for the Muslim community, it originates from immigrant coming from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Cyprus, the Arab world, Malaysia and parts of Africa. There are around 600 mosques and Muslim prayer centres throughout Britain that offer instruction and facilities for educational and welfare activities. The Central Mosque in London and its associated Islamic Cultural Centre has the largest congregation in Britain, and during festivals it may number 5,000. Many other important towns in England - Liverpool, Manchester, Leicester, Bradford, Edinburgh and Glasgow have developed their own Muslim communities of Sunni, Shiva or Sufi traditions.

The Sikh religion is also represented by a large community of over 300,000 people that originate largely from India. They have their own temples or guardwaras cater for the religions, educational, social welfare and cultural needs.

Another large religions community having the same origins in India is the Hindu one. It has also around 300,000 members that have their own temples or nadir.

Several other small religions communities can also be mentioned: the Buddhist community that promote its principles: the Jains, another ancient Indian origin religion; the Zoroastrian or the Mazdais, coming from Iran represented in Britain by the Parsi community that came from the South Asian sub-continent; another religion of Iranian origin, the Baha'i movement that consider major religions as divine in origin.

The Church of Scotland is Protestant, but Presbyterian in form, governed by a hierarchy of church courts including lay people too.

Great Britain proves to be a country of tolerance so we can also find there some religions organisations that strive to develop good relations between different religions in Britain, such as the Interfaith Network for the United Kingdom, the Council of Christians and Jews. Christians, Muslims, Sikhs Hindus, Jews and Buddhists have taken part together in the annual religions observance to make Commonwealth Day.

1.16. United Kingdom - a Country of Multiculturalism

Britain, just as the same as most of the countries in the world, is, nowadays, a multicultural country. Among the majority of indigenous white British people, there are many other people from all over the world from many kinds of ethnic background, such as Irish, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Japanese, Carribean, African, etc. The people of other ethnics immigrate to Britain, and live there among British society. Immigration to Britain has happened from a long time ago, that was since the 18th Century, when there were about 20,000 Black people sent to Britain to be slaves. In the 19th Century a great number of Irish people moved to Britain because of Potato Famine in 1840s. As the world changed, since the World War II, there are a lot of immigrants from New Commonwealth nations (the Carribean and the Indian sub-continent) and Arabian countries. Until now, immigrants hope to get better life, better job, and better education in Britain. However, there have been various Immigration Acts to inhibit or restrict immigrations from keep going on and on, as many people in Britain assume that immigration is the cause of overcrowding Britain.

Inequalities exists in British society because of the differences in social class, gender, and ethnic differences: in employment, education, housing, relation with workmates, and treatment given by the police. Sometimes the white people and men get better treatment than people with coloured skin and women and indirect forms of racist humours or jokes often done in workplaces, and verbal expressions of racial hatred in daily life. The sense of threatening comes from the the whites worry that their culture will soon disappear and be replaced by the culture of the immigrants. Moreover, the immigrants have their own religion. Parents of the children from the immigrant family send their children to their 'own' school as they do not want to lose their identity, their culture and religion. Multiculturalism is a source of social problems, but also a source of variety in life.

1.17.1. British Customs and Traditions

The British origin people have developed specific customs, traditions and festivals as life falls naturally into the calendar since the Celtic times, passing through Christianity to the Modern Age. The basic holidays originated in the medieval times and they started being religious after the influence of Christianity. Customs and feasts have been created by people who wanted to express their feelings in a direct manner, and they turned into a specific British way of life, which became famous all over the world. The importance of tradition, its role in establishing and reinforcing the identity of a nation has always played a great part in developing a growing interest in various aspects of heritage.

The British are said to be reserved in manners, dress and speech. Their insularity, conservaticism and sticking to traditions are often pointed. Although they are famous for their politeness, self - discipline and their specific sense of humour, there are big differences in manners. More than that, many traditional British customs have changed as the way of life has changed.

Very popular always was Valentine's day on l4th February. It is a great day for all lovers. Originaly this day commemorated the Roman priest who gave aid and comfort to the persecuted Christians before he was put to death. On this day young people send Valentine's cards to a person of opposite sex, usually anymiously, and exchange gifts. Cards can have serious and loving text. Valentine's Day is not only a public Holiday, but also one of the saint's day that are celebrated in Britain. Christianity brought the story of St Valentine - a Christian who lived in the third century, during the time of the Roman Emperor Claudius II, who was not a Christian. The Emperor decided that his soldiers must not marry because this way they do not make good fighters. One day, as Valentine was working for the church, he helped a soldier to get married and was imprisoned and sentenced to death. In prison, he fell in love with the daughter of a man who worked in the prison. On the day of his death, he sent a note to his beloved and in the end he signed "Your Valentine". He was executed on February 14^th, so the day of the festival changed from February 15^th to 14^th and the same name changed to St. Valentine's Day. In the early 19^th century when the post office started in Britain, people began to send Valentine's cards to the person they loved on February 14^th. Often people do not sign the cards with their names, but just write "Be my Valentine" or "From Your Valentine" like in a game. People go out to restaurants for the evening and have dinner for two with candles and soft music.

In March there are two different celebrations specific for Wales - St. David's day and St. Patrick's day (the patron of Ireland when people are often dressed in shamrocks). In April St.George, the patron of England is celebrated in April, and All Fool's day which is called after the simple shouting "Fool"you deceive someone funny joke or trick. But the greatest celebration of speing is Easter that is the feast of Christian church. The celebration of Easter has its origin in an old pagan festival. Its name comes from the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, Eostre. In pagan times it was the Easter tradition for people to offer eggs to one another as a symbol of the new life regeneration. Today the Easter starts with Good Friday, which is the day when the Romans killed Jesus Christ, in Jerusalem about 2000 years ago. Two days later, on Easter Sunday, Christians celebrate his resurrection. British origin peoples celebrate Easter by parades running in many areas where peoples wear clothes decorated with spring flowers and children usually have one or two week holiday from school. They also use to decorate eggs with different colours, and then take them to the top of a hill and roll them down in a traditional competition called Easter egg-rolling. Pace-egg shells must be crushed for they are popular with witches to use as boats.

Pancake Racing is also a traditional lively and energetic game played by women wearing aprons and headscarves and running with frying pans and pancakes in a 400- meter race to the parish church, tossing their pancakes three times on their way. After declaring the winner, all the frying pans are laid around the church for a blessing service.

Although it is a relic of a 5oo-year-old ceremony, and more dangerous than rolling eggs, the custom of rolling cheese is associated with grazing rights and it is maintained nowadays too.

Parents tell their children that the Easter Rabbit (Bunny) brings eggs and hides them in the garden and the children have to go outside looking for them. The transformation of the hares that was considered a sacred animal by the Anglo-Saxons, into the Easter Bunny may have resulted from a natural confusion between the two animals and the wish to disguise its pagan origins. People use also to eat hot cross buns at Easter - small loaves of bread made with fruit and spices, with a cross on the top.

Good friday commemorates Jesus' crucufixion while Easter Sunday commemorates the Resurrection of Jesus. Dyed and decorated easter eggs - symbol of a new life, are given as presents. Than comes May Day when political parties of the left hold processions and public meetings. But for British May Day also means the traditional spring festival. In the old days people went out into the woods before dawn to cellect flowers and green branches.It is generally assumed that the May Day celebration originated in the spring fertility festivals when the Roman festival of Flora, goddess of flowers, marked the beginning of summer. The Roman and then the Celtic tradition of May Day continued to be celebrated throughout the Middle Ages especially by the rural and village people. It is a time of fun a Queen of May is chosen from the young women of the village to rule the crops until harvest Priests and Lords are the target of many jokes committed by the Queen, the Green Man, and their supporters. The custom only survives in a few places where it is connected with Morris dancing. It is also performed on religious holidays and weddings. It has the real roots in Africa and Asia and in the l7th century the main performance was a kind of pageant or play. E.g. Elizabethan pegeant performed by Morris dancers was based on the Robin Hood legend. This involved a Lord of Misrule - choosen specialy for this occasion - being crowned and then choosing his own personal bodyguard. Other performers included drummers, pipers, dragons and hobby-horses. Teams of Morris dancers usually have a specially dressed Squire or Bagman in charge. Ordinary dancers normally wear white shirts and black trousers. Short round hats or taller topper are decorated with flowers and coloured ribbons. These all have special significance. Red poppies are sign of health, white poppies of plenty, blue cornflowers represent blessedness or holiness, white hankerchiefs waved from the hand symbolise the gathering and scattering of magical energy over earth and crops. Morris dancers usually perform the very old ritualistic ceremonies associated with fertility and the re-awaking of the earth after winter.

There is also Mother's day in May that honours all mothers. Fathers are also no forgotten - the day dedicated to them is the 3rd Sunday in June. And only a few days before it is celebrating of Qeen's Official Birthday in the middle of June. There are various ceremonies associated with it as ceremony of the Trooping the colour and the Horse Guards Parade. The Queen, her husband, and the Prince of Wales, all on horseback, are present. Trooping the Colour is a military pageant that dates back to times before the Regular British Army came into existence. In these days soldiers were billeted in private houses, not in barracks. Every day the officers and men that were to be on the guard would assemble around the regimental colours or flag. The next step was to parade the flag and slowly the elaborate military display which makes up the modern Trooping of the Colour came into being. At the end of this ceremony, the pageant returns from Horse Guards' Parade back to Buckingham Palace. The route is line with many thousands of tourists, who usually enjoy this fine display of British pageantry.

Halloween is the next well known day. Among the old Celts it was the last day of the year and the beggining of winter when witches and ghosts were supposed to celebrate their rites. A favourite custom is to make a jack-o-lantern from a pumpkin that is scraped out and in which eyes, a nose and a mounth are cut and then a candle is light inside. Children celebrate it by dressing up in Halloween customs with masks over their faces. Carrying baskets or bags they go to their friends'and neighbours' houses and they knock at the door or ring the bell. When people come to the door, children say " Trick or treat" which means "Give us a treat or we will play a trick on you." Then people treat the children with sweets, fruit or money. It has its origin in Sumhain, the celebration that marked the end of the Celtic year when the Druidic priests believed that the dead could come back to earth and cause trouble for the living. To counter this, they built large, sacred bonfires to chase away the spirits of the dead. The Romans had also their own "All Souls Day" celebrated by bonfires, parades, costumes and feasts. It was known as Hallowmas that slowly changed into Hallowe'en, turning the celebration of October 31 to November 2^nd into a custom for driving the bad spirits away. People use to make jack o'lanterns by cutting a hole in a large pumpkin and put a candle inside so the light can be easily seen. The turnip that is scooped out is usually cooked and mashed up with potatoes to make a 'clap shot'. Lucky charms and money are mixed into it -for bringing good luck and for telling divinations.

Another thing people use to do for driving away bad spirits was to dress themselves like witches and ghosts. Children still do this when going on Hallowe'en parties where games like the one called "bobbing the apple" are played. Water and apples are put in a large bowl and the children try to catch them keeping his or her hands behind and take the apples out of water with his or her teeth. The game is difficult and the children get completely wet. In Scotland, people use to throw coins in the water, which, of course, sink to the bottom. Brave plungers can get the coins only if they are prepared to put their heads right under the water.

Rememberance day commemorates the coutry's war death, on that day in l9l8 World War I came to an end and Guy Fawkes Night on 5 November is a fireworks celebration. On that day, in l605, the British parliament was saved from destruction when a plot to blow up the building was discovered in time. Christmas is well-known for its significance. In England the main emphasis is on Christmas Eve, and the festive meal is served in the evening while in Britain the festive meal is the dinner and a roast turkey and aChristmas pudding is served. Children hang up their stocking and in the morning of the next day they enjoy unwrapping their presents. New Year's Eve is a big festival in Scotland, where it is called Hogmanay. It begins with the arrival of the guests who have been invated to join the family to see in the New Year. They sit down to dinner which begins with haggins - Scotland's national food that consists of minced hearth, lungs and liver of a sheep, boiled in a sheep's stomach with oatmeal. Before midnight many townsfolk gather in the square, they sing and dance in the Scottish style. At midnight there is a great cheer, people cross arms, links hands for a traditional song "Auld Lang Syne" Scottish people also considere lucky if a dark-haired man is the first to set foot in the house after midnight, bringing a coin,a piece of bread, and a coal as a symbol of plenty in the comming year. Christmas is the most widely celebrated festival in Britain, although New Year is considered more important in Scotland. Most businesses close down from around December 24^th until the New Year begins. People spend their holidays with their families. However, it became a tradition to go form a swim either in the sea or in a lake, even though sometimes the swimmers have to break the ice to get in the water. The event is entertaining for the on-lookers and the swimmers confess that they enjoy it too.

Before Christmas, the tradition is to decorate homes with fresh mistletoe and holly to protect the house from the evil and to have eternal life.

In Wales there is a church service known as "Plygain" (daybreak) attended between 3 am and 6 am by men to sing carols. After the service, a day of feasting and drinking would begin. The New Year's Day is a public holiday. At midnight, people join hands and sing an old song called "Auld Lang Syne" whose lines were written by the Scottish poet Robert Burns two hundred years ago. After midnight, people use to drink a glass of champagne, light fireworks and firecrackers and dance until sunrise. In Edinburgh, there are house parties, street parades, and Scottish music. The Scots have the custom of First Footing where at midnight, armed with a bottle of whisky and gifts, people visit their neighbours going from house to house, toasting for the New Year , often not returning home until day break. It is said that if the first footing person is a dark-haired men, it brings good luck. The man leaves the house by the back door just before midnight on New Years Eve, walks around and on the strikes of midnight, and knocks on the front door. The house keeper opens the door and receives the following gifts: salt for seasoning, silver for wealth, coal for warmth, a match for kindling and bread for sustenance.

In Wales the custom of letting in the New Year is slightly different in that if the visitor is a woman and the male householder opens the door that is bad luck. If the first man to cross the threshold is a red haired man, that is also bad luck. All existing debts are to be paid; never lend anything to anyone on New Year's Day else you would have bad luck, and the behaviour of an individual on this day is a n indication of how he would behave all year.

The most popular New Year's custom is the Calennig (small gift). On January the first, from dawn until noon, groups of young boys would visit all the houses in the village carrying evergreen twigs and a cup of cold water drawn from a local well. The boys would then use the twigs to splash people with water. In return, they would receive the Calennig, usually in the form of copper coins. The custom survived in some areas well after the Wold War II, at least in the form of the chanting of a small verse or two in exchange for small coins.

1.17.1. British Festivals

The Notting Hill Carnival is the largest street festival in Europe, and it takes place every August Bank Holiday weekend, traditionally around the London streets surrounding Ladbroke Grove. It began in the early 1960s among the West Indian Community in London as a celebration of the end of slavery in the West Indies. It became a traditional tourist attraction as million of people attend it for fun and entertainment. The festival includes a carnival costumes parade, which take many months to plan and prepare.

The Midsummer's Day - the longest day of the year, June the 24^th, makes the opportunity of Midsummer Festivals, as a very old custom of the Druids. Strange ceremonies are performed at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, to mark the beginning of months and seasons of the Druid calendar. Young girls adorn their heads with flowers wreaths and they will marry the man whom they will see in their dreams walking along the straw placed across the bowl of water under their beds, or who will dry their face on the towel placed beside her bed. They also consider that the dew and the herbs gathered on Midsummer Night have healing properties.

Either is the custom of the Midsummer's Day for the farmers to weed the rye and burn other weeds. The fishermen of the east coast of Scotland transferred the bonfire rites to their own festival on 29^th June (St. Peter's Day). Families light small bonfires in his honour outside their front doors.

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is an annual paradise. For five joyful weeks, the elegant seaside city resigns itself to a grand theatrical show. From all corners of the globe dramatic and musical troops descend on Scotland's capital to attempt and dazzle the spectators into parting with their pounds: in exchange for laughter, tears, and amusement. The cheerful culture-type goers rush from place to place, morning to night, eight shows per day. In the early days during the late 40s and early 50s, the various Fringe groups, now attracting an increasing number of student theatre companies, from Oxford, Cambridge, London and Durham, put on their shows independently, in small, intimate performance spaces, church halls, local community centres, and University buildings. As the word spread about the opportunity to perform and equally the freedom of expression afforded to writers and performers, the range and professional quality of productions increased.

1.17.2. Superstitions and Sayings

Weddings have a host of superstitions.. These are well known and carried out today too. No modern bride will allow her bridegroom to see her on the wedding day before she gets to the church and she will not have put on her whole 'ensemble' before wedding day without leaving off some part of it. Usually she leaves her veil off or takes off one shoe. To be kissed by a passing chimney sweep is very good luck.. The tradition of tying old shoes to the back of the Couple's car, for example, stems from Tudor's time when guests would throw shoes at the Bride and Groom with great luck being bestowed on them if they or their carriage was hit. In Anglo Saxon times, the Bride was symbolically struck with a shoe by her Groom to establish his authority. Brides would then throw shoes at their bridesmaids to see who would marry next.

"Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue and a Silver Sixpence in her Shoe". This rhyme originated in Victorian times. "Something Old" signifies that the couple's friends will stay with them. In one version of the tradition the Something Old was an old garter which was given to the bride by a happily married woman so that the new bride would also enjoy a happy marriage. "Something New" look to the future for health, happiness and success. "Something Borrowed" is an opportunity for the bride's family to give her something as a token of their love (and it must be returned to ensure Good Luck), and "Something Blue" is thought lucky because the colour of blue represents fidelity and constancy. The custom began in ancient Israel where brides wore a blue ribbon in their hair to symbolise their fidelity. A sixpence was placed in the shoe to bring the couple health in their married life.

Flowers have always been a big feature at weddings. The Groom is supposed to wear a flower that appears in the Bridal Bouquet in his buttonhole. This stems from the medieval times when a knight wore his lady's colours, as a declaration of his love. Each flower has its meaning and can display a special message.

The Wedding Cake was originally was broken over the Bride's head to bestow good luck and fertility. Today's the three tier Cake should be cut by the newly-weds as a significance of sharing their life. Every guest then eats a crumb to ensure good luck. And sleeping with a piece under her pillow is said to make a single woman dream of her future husband.

Walking is the best way of getting to the church., as there is more chance of spotting lucky omens: seeing a rainbow, having the sun shine on the Bride and meeting a black cat or a chimney sweep are all lucky. Bad omens include seeing a pig, hare or lizard running across the road, or spotting on an open grave. Coming home from church can be equally hazardous. Tradition dictates that the new wife must enter he r home by the main door, and to avoid bad luck, must never trip or fall - hence the custom that a bride should be carried over the threshold.

Until the 19^th century, brides hardly ever bought a special wedding dress, opting for their best outfit instead. Green was always avoided, as it was thought to be unlucky. To say a girl "had a green gown" also implied that she was of loose morals, because her dress would be grass-stained due to rolling around in the fields. Queen Victoria, who broke the tradition of Royals marrying in silver, made white dresses popular. Symbolising purity and virginity, white was also thought to ward off evil spirits.

Different parts of the country have their own particular superstitions designed to bring good fortune, health and wealth to their house and family.

In days gone for, food preparation was surrounded by many taboos. House wives believed that food would be spoilt if it were stirred "widdershins" - that is, in the opposite direction to that of the sun., or that bread would not rise if there was a corpse in the vicinity, or to cut off both ends of the loaf would make the Devil fly over the house.

Once at the table, there are other numerous other things to watch out for. The best known of course is not to have 13 people at the table, and should someone spilt the salt, a pinch had to be thrown over the left shoulder into the eyes of the devil. Crossed knives at the table signify a quarrel, while white tablecloth left on the table overnight means the household will need a shroud in the near future.

The women must not pour from the same teapot, if they do, a quarrel will ensue. In Somerset a double-yoked egg is viewed with concern as it foretell of a hurried wedding due to a pregnancy.

Magical rites and charms have always surrounded pregnancy and childbirth, and the new mother makes sure some are still respected. Choosing the baby carriage before the baby is born, is quite safe, but is must not be delivered to the home until after the baby is born.

In Britain, there are many superstitions about plants and flowers. Putting a pumpkin in the window is to scare away the evil spirits; blackthorn (sloe) is often referred to as a witch's tree. As late as the 1940s, anyone seen to carry a blackthorn walking stick was suspected of being a witch. May or hawthorn, brought into the house before Mayday is widely associated with bad luck; in most places, rowan is well known for its protective qualities against witches and fairies, and is believed to be the primary tree of power by ancient Celts. It was called the moon tree in northern myths, when the frosts at the winter solstice, would leave stars clustered among the upper branches in what may well have been the forerunner of our Christmas tree tradition.

In some British origin parts, it is still common for member of the family to sit with a corpse the night before the funeral, the corpse being surrounded by candles to keep the evil spirits away. The custom of burying people with their feet and face towards the east is a relic of the pagan sun-worship practice, and adopted by the Christian Church, which considers that the summons of the Last Judgement will come from that direction. Superstitions also says that a corpse which does not become still is waiting for another death, and that if the sun shines brightly on the face of the one of the mourners at the graveside, then he will be the next to die.

Many superstitions are associated with numbers. Odd numbers are generally considered to be lucky, even numbers-unlucky. A person born on the first day of the month is particularly fortunate whereas someone born on the second is very unlucky. Three is a lucky number and three times three even luckier. However, it is widely believed that when two people die, a third will follow. Seven being a mystical or sacred number, is extremely good. A seventh child is very lucky and the seventh child of the seventh is considered to have abilities of curing due to paranormal abilities. A birth date, which is divisible by seven, can ensure good fortune all life long. Thirteen is considered unlucky as the number is associated both with the Last Supper where Christ and his 12 disciples made up 13, and also with the Norse god Loki - the spirit of Evil and strife, who was a troublesome thirteen guest at a banquet in Valhalla. The Scots call any Friday that comes on the 13^th of month "Black Friday".

1.17.3. Other traditions

The Pearly Royals started in the Victorian age; they were costermonger's street vendors of fruit and vegetables, and their distinctive costumes are said to have sprung from the arrival of a big cargo of pearl-buttons from Japan in the 1860's. It seems that one of the costers sewed some of the buttons round the edge of his wide-bottomed trousers, and the fashion caught on. Traditionally costers elect Kings, called "the Pearlies", to lead them against bullies seeking to drive them from their pitches. Each individual area in London has its own king and his "donah" (as the wives are called), and both are elaborately turned down. The magnificent suit, hats and dresses, handed down together with hereditary titles are sewn with majestic symbols, stars, moons, suns, flowers, diamonds, Trees of Life, Eyes of God and fertility designs. Each outfit can have as many as 30,000 buttons on it at charity events, christenings, weddings, and funerals. Where there is a special drive the kings and queens ride in splendour on their decorated donkey-carts and they are called Cockneys.

The Tichborne Dole is an old British tradition still alive today. It was born in the village of Tichborne near Aylesford in Hampshire every year on March 25^th - the Feast of Annunciation. It is said that suffering from a wasting disease which had left her crippled, on her deathbed Lady Mabella Tichborne asked her husband to donate food to the people in need, regularly, every year. He was reluctant but made an agreement with her, as to how much he would give. Sir Roger agreed to give the corn from all the land which his dying wife could crawl around whilst holding a blazing torch in her hand, before the torch went out. Lady Mabella succeeded in crawling around a twenty a-three acre field, which is still called "The Crawls". Being aware of her husband miserly character, Mabella added a curse: that should the dole ever be stopped then seven sons would be born to the house, followed immediately by a generation of daughters, after which the Tichborne name would die out and the ancient house fall into ruin.

The custom of giving the Dole, in the form of bread, on March 25^th, Lady's Day has continued. Lady's Day is celebrated in honour of the Virgin Mary as this day, nine months before Christmas: it is the day of the Annunciation from the Archangel Gabriel that she would bear Christ. In the 12^th century, Lady's Day was considered the first day of the year and persisted until the official calendar change of 1752.

Scottish Kilt and Bagpipe

In Scotland, both men and women wear kilts, but men also wear a small bag called "sporran". In the 17^th century, the highlanders did not wear trousers. Their kilt was made of tartan a kind of a cloth with coloured squares dyed in natural colours. They also wore tartan cloth over their trousers instead of a coat, that was a blanket or "plaid" which was pinned over the chest with a piece of bone or wood, and tied round the middle with as leather belt. The kilt was very practical as when the wearers had to spend the night in the open, they could just unfold the plaid and use it as a cover. In the 19^th century, the tartan became a very popular fashion that was reinforced by Queen Victoria who had a castle built in Scotland. The highlanders belong always to a big family or clan (McDonald, Mackenzie, Steward) and they wear the same tartan and play music on a bagpipe which seems to have its origin in the Roman times. The MacCrimmons the legendary pipers of Skye were said to have received the art of piping by some natural means. Some of the tunes are famous and they can be heard at the Tattoo at the Edinburgh Festival. During the festival, soldiers coming from all over the world march inside the castle and the Scottish pipers play the bagpipes. At the end of the evening, one piper plays his pipe on the walls of the Edinburgh castle.

Michaelmas

The Festival of Michaelmas is celebrated on the 29^th of September as a dedication of St. Michael the Archangel, the Leader of the Heavenly Host. As he was the patron of the fishermen and the horsemen, it is celebrated with horse racing and giving of gifts including carrots, which were harvested and blessed at this time. The harvest festival is also celebrated by the baking of a "Struan Micheil", cake a special cake made of the year's cereals. Harvest Home as a festival in Scotland is the most celebrated in Gaelic-speaking Scotland and the Northeast.

1.17.4. Food Tradition in Britain

The history of Britain has played an important part in its tradition and culture and food. The Romans brought here the cherries, stinging nettles for salad vegetables, cabbage and peas; they also improved the cultivation of crops such as corn, and the wine. The Saxons were excellent farmers and cultivated a wide range of herbs. The Vikings and Danes brought the techniques for smoking and drying fish. Even today, the North East coasts of England and Scotland are the places to find the best kippers (salted and smoked fish). Collops is an old Scandinavian word for pieces or slices of meat and a dish of Collops is traditionally served on Burns Night (January 25) in Scotland. The York Ham is a great favourite with the British housewife.

The Normans invaded not only Britain but also the British eating habits. The importation of foods and spices from abroad has greatly influenced the British diet in the Middle Ages: spice from the Far East, sugar from the Caribbean, coffee and cocoa from South America and tea from India, and potatoes from America. The growth of the Empire brought new tastes and flavors - Kedgeree, has become a traditional dish at the British breakfast since the 18^th century as a version of the Indian dish consisted of rice, cooked flaked fish and hard-boiled eggs.

As there is a long way back to home, from the place of work or school, the British people tend to have a big breakfast before their go to work and the meal at the midday is spent with the workmates or schoolmates. They also have their evening g meal or dinner between 6.30 PM and 8 PM.

The British breakfast is much bigger than in most other countries. It can consist of fried bacon and eggs with fried bread and possibly fried tomatoes or black pudding. Cereals are also very popular, especially cornflakes. In Scotland, many people eat "porridge" or boiled oats.

British people can also have a packed lunch consisting of some sandwiches, a packet of crisps, an apple and a can of soft drink. The mostly typical thing to eat for dinner is "meat and two veg"; this consists of a piece of meat accompanied by two different boiled vegetables. This is covered with "gravy" which is a juice obtained when the meat is cooked. One of the vegetables is usually potatoes.

The Ploughman's Lunch is a very popular thing to eat in a pub at midday. It consists of a bread roll with a piece of cheese and pickled onion. Haggis is a delicacy of Scotland and considered the national dish. It is a mixture of sheep's heart, liver, windpipe and blood, salt and a lot of pepper boiled in a stomach of the same animal. It is served with boiled potatoes and turnip mashed together, especially on the evening of January the 25^th, when Scots get together to spend "Burns Supper" The Scots all over the world celebrate on this day, their famous national poet, Robert Burns. A meal is served during which Burns' poems are recited and speeches are made. "Tam o'Shanter", "Address to the Unco Guide", "To a Haggis" .The haggis is "piped" (preceded by a man playing the bagpipe a rising tune) and ceremoniously cut with a "sgian-dubh" - a small knife that the Scotsmen wear on the top of their hose stockings. Whisky is drunk and toasts are made for women -"lassies" that reply by toasting to the men. After meal dancing starts. As many other gatherings the Burns supper ends with "Auld Lang Syne".

The typical British pie can be either sweet or savoury; it is made of pastry, filled with steak, kidney or apple and cooked in the oven. They are variations of the pie such as Cornish pasties, which were originally invented for the miners, as it was too much trouble for them to come to the surface to have lunch.

The British eat their bread almost always covered with butter or margarine. The most popular type of bread is the sliced white bread. Scotland is also famous for its whisky "uisge-beatha, that is "water of life" Many visitors come and see their distilleries built mostly near the River Spey, Iverness, but the most famous is The Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre near the castle in Edinburgh.

Anna, the seventh duchess of Bedford in 1840, introduced afternoon tea in England. She would become hungry around four o'clock in the afternoon, long before the household dinnertime. The Duchess asked that a tray of tea, bread, butter, and cake to be brought to her room during the late afternoon. This became a habit of hers and she began inviting friends to join her. It was before the Earl of Sandwich had the idea of putting a filling between two slices of bread. It became fashionable for the upper class women that used to serve tea with their friends between four and five. Traditionally it consists of a selection of sandwiches, including cucumber sandwiches, scones, served with clotted cream and preserves. Cakes and pastries are also served. The Devonshire Cream Tea is famous worldwide and consists of scones, strawberry jam and the vital ingredient, Devon clotted cream as well as cups of hot sweet tea served in china teacups.

The most popular British dish is considered "fish and chips": freshly cooked, piped hot fish and chips, smothered in salt and soused in vinegar. There around 8,500 fish and chips shops across the UK - that is eight for every one McDonald's outlet, making British Fish and Chips the nation's favourite take-away.

The naming of the British pubs became popular by the 12^th century, when they had not only names but also signs (the majority of the population could not read and write) reflecting the British life at that time. Before King Henry VIII and the Reformation, many had a religious name - "The Crossed Keys" - the emblem of St. Peter. When Henry split with the Catholic Church, names were changed: "The King' Head", or "The Rose & Crown". "The Red Lion" is probably the most popular name for a pub and originates from the time of James I and the VI of Scotland who ordered that the heraldic red lion of Scotland be displayed on all buildings of importance - including pubs.

1.18. British Music

The origins of music in Britain lie in the songs sung and dance music played by ordinary people. Passed from village to village and handed down in the unwritten form from generation to generation.

John Dunstable was one of the greatest English composers of the first half of the 15th centyury, whose work includes masses, mottets and secular songs. It is believed that he spent a great deal of his life in France and Italy where he became mostly influential due to his style based on consonant harmonies on thirds which became the norm of the time. He was in the service of Duke Bedford, Henry's regent in France, the man who was responsible for ordering the burning to death of Joan of Arc. He died in London and he is burried in St.'Stphan's Cemetery, Walbrook.

Georg Friederich Händel, son of a barber-surgeon in Halle. When he was 17 he was appointed organist of the Calvinist Cathedral, but the next year he accepted an invitation to Italy, where he spent more than three years, in Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice where he wrote many Italian cantatas,and perfected his technique in setting Italian words for the human voice. In Rome he also composed some Latin church music. Early in 1710 and went to Hanover, where he was appointed Kapellmeister to the elector. But he at once took leave to take up an invitation to London, where his opera Rinaldo was produced early in 1711. In 1718-19 Handel was appointed musical director of the Opera In London and under George II he had taken British naturalization.

Handel moved between Italian opera and the English forms, oratorio, ode and the like, unsure of his future commercially and artistically. After a joumey to Dublin in 1741-2, where Messiah had its premiere (in aid of charities), he put opera behind him and for most of the remainder of his life gave oratorio performances, mostly at the new Covent Garden theatre, usually at or close to the Lent season. Handel was very economical in the re-use of his ideas; at many times in his life he also drew heavily on the music of others.

Handel died in 1759 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, recognized in England and by many in Germany as the greatest composer of his day. The wide range of expression at his command is shown not only in the operas, with their rich and varied arias, but also in the form he created, the English oratorio, where it is applied to the fates of nations as well as individuals. He had a vivid sense of drama. But above all he had a resource and originality of invention, to be seen in the extraordinary variety of music in which melodic beauty, boldness and humour all play a part, that place him and J.S. Bach as the supreme masters of the Baroque era in music.

1.18.1. Modern Times Music

Over the last thirty or so years British pop music has led the world in its range and quality, starting several new trends. In the 1920s the young people listened to ragtime and jazz, while in the 1930s - Swing became popular. Benny Goodman and his Orchestra were the 'King of the Swing', as were Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw. The music was fast and frantically paced and led to dances being banned from dance halls, as the young women being flung into the air by their partners showed their stocking tops and underwear. The Second World War brought fast, frantic American dance music - boogie-woogie or jitterbug. Dances were held in church halls, village halls, clubs, but slower, romantic songs were also popular as loved ones went away to fight. After the war 'skiffle' bands became popular: they used household washboards and tea chests, as part of their set of instruments! In 1950s - Rock and Roll became very popular and then the Beatles began their career when many young people enjoyed 'hippie' music but also the music of the 'Mods' - ska music and The Who.

The first big new sound of the 1970s was "Glam Rock", with its main figures of David Bowie, Elton John and of course Gary Glitter. They brought a welcome relief with their platform boots, sequins, nail varnish and colourful hair. The punk movement of the late 1970s began in England. Great British bands of this scene were The Sex Pistols and The Clash. The Punk style was Mohicans, bondage clothes, safety pins, piercings and bovver boots.

The 1980s saw the rise of hip hop and rap music, with American influences powerful once again in the form of such groups as Run DMC and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. It also saw the rise and fall of the 'New Romantics', typified by groups like Adam and the Ants, who dressed as pirates and highway men and wore huge amounts of makeup.

Britpop was the general name given in the 1990s to a new wave of successful British bands who made a big impact in the United States and Europe, as well as in England. The most successful have been Radiohead, Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Massive Attack and The Spice Girls.

England

The largest and most populous home nation of the United Kingdom accounts for more than 83% of the total UK population, occupies most of the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the westand also, it is bordered by the North Sea, Irish Sea, Atlantic Ocean and English Channel. England is named after the Angles, a number of Germanic tribes believed to have originated in Angeln in northern Germany, who settled in England in the 5th and 6th centuries. This is also the origin of its Latin name Anglia. It has not had a distinct political identity since , when the United Kingdom of Great Britain was established as a unified political entity; however, it has a legal identity separate from those of Scotland and Northern Ireland, as part of the entity "England and Wales".The largest city, London, is also the capital of the United Kingdom.

2.1. English Nation Symbols

The logo of the England national football team combines the Three Lions with the Tudor rose. The two traditional symbols of England are the St. George's cross (the English flag) and the Three Lions coat of arms, both derived from the great Norman powers that formed the monarchy - the Cross of Aquitaine and the Lions of Anjou. The three lions were first definitely used by Richard I (Richard the Lionheart) in the late 12th century (although it is also possible that Henry I may have bestowed it on his son Henry before then). Historian Simon Schama has argued that the Three Lions are the true symbol of England because the English throne descended down the Angevin line.

A red cross acted as a symbol for many Crusaders in the 12th and 13th centuries. It became associated with St George and England, along with other countries and cities (such as Georgia, Milan and the Republic of Genoa), which claimed him as their patron saint and used his cross as a banner. It remained in national use until 1707, when the Union Jack (more properly known as the Union Flag, except when used at sea) which English and Scottish ships had used at sea since 1606, was adopted for all purposes to unite the whole of Great Britain under a common flag. The flag of England no longer has much of an official role, but it is widely flown by Church of England properties and at sporting events. (Paradoxically, the latter is a fairly recent development; until the late 20th century, it was commonplace for fans of English teams to wave the Union Flag, rather than the St George's Cross).

The rose is widely recognised as the national flower of England and is used in a variety of contexts. Predominantly, this is a red rose (which also symbolises Lancashire), such as the badge of the English Rugby Union team. However, a white rose (which also symbolises Yorkshire) or a "Tudor rose" (symbolising the end of the War of the Roses) may also be used on different occasions. The Three Lions badge performs a similar role for the English national football team and English national cricket team.

Inhabitants of England refer to themselves as "British" rather than "English"; centuries of English dominance within the United Kingdom has created a situation where to be English is, from linguistic point of view, an "unmarked" state (i.e. a British person, institution, custom, city, etc. is often assumed English unless specified otherwise). The English frequently include their neighbours in the general term "British" while the Scots and Welsh tend to be more forward about referring to themselves by one of those more specific terms. St George's Day, the country's national holiday, is barely celebrated marks an apathy to the nation outside of the sporting arena. Although a part of England, a small, but noticeable, minority of those living in Cornwall feel similarly, considering themselves ethnically Cornish first.

English national identity is often taken to have been appropriated by far right organizations such as the British National Party and the English Democrats Party . This radicalizing of identity is often seen to be a problem. Thus, English identity is - for better or worse - closely associated with English nationalism and often with British Nationalism. Some English nationalists claim that the 'original culture' of England is comprised of legacies of Brythonic tribes of Celts and Anglo-Saxons appearing in waves of gradual migration. It also seen as being influenced by the Scandinavian legends such as Beowulf and the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a common early location for English identity.

Attempts have been made to de-radicalize English identity. These toe a fine line between trying to find an English-ness, and trying to avoid the racist conotations of its many current expressions. Modern English identity is often built around its sports, one field in which the British Home Nations often compete individually. In particular the English Association football team, Rugby Union team and Cricket team often cause increases in the popularity of 'Englishness'

2.2. Historical Background

Farmers and permanent settlements, with an advanced megalithic civilisation arose in western England some 4,000 years ago. It was replaced around 1,500 years later by Celtic tribes migrating from continental western Europe, mainly from France. These tribes were known collectively as "Britons", a name bestowed by Phoenician that indicated the main occupation of the inhabitants as the island was part of a Europe-wide trading network.

The Britons were significant players in continental affairs and supported their allies, the Romans in the Gallic Wars that prompted the Romans to invade and subdue the island, first with Julius Caesar's raid in 55 BC, and then the Emperor Claudius' conquest in the following century. The whole southern part of the island - roughly corresponding to modern day England and Wales - became a prosperous part of the Roman Empire. It was finally abandoned early in the 5th century when the weakening Empire pulled back its legions to defend borders on the Continent.

Roman Britannia could not longer resist the invading Germanic tribes in the 5th and 6th centuries, enveloping the majority of modern-day England in a new culture and language. Some of the population began emigrating across the channel to modern-day Brittany, thus giving it its name and Breton language. But many of the Romano-British remained in and were assimilated into the newly English areas.

The invaders fell into three main groups: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. They became more civilised, recognisable states formed that began to merge with one another.. From time to time throughout this period, one Anglo-Saxon king, recognised as the "Bretwalda" by other rulers, had effective control of all or most of the English; so it is impossible to identify the precise moment when the Kingdom of England was unified. But the effective and real unity came as a response to the Danish Viking incursions which occupied the eastern half of England in the 8th century. Egbert, King of Wessex (d. 839) is often considered as the first king of all the English, although the title "King of England" was first adopted two generations later by Alfred the Great (ruled - ).

The principal legacy left behind in those territories from which the languages of the Britons were displaced is that of toponyms. Many of the place names in England and, to a lesser extent, Scotland are derived from Celtic British names: London, Dumbarton, York, Dorchester, Dover, and Colchester. Several place name elements are thought to be wholly or partly Brythonic in origin, particularly bre-, bal-, and -dun for hills, carr for a high rocky place, and coomb for a small deep valley.

From this age, where the majority culture and language came to be that of a Germanic origin - Old English - we can piece together how England came to be created and have the Welsh legacy of their name for England - Lloegr - translated as "lost lands".

West Midlands was only lightly colonised with Anglian and Saxon settlements.

In , William the Conqueror and the Normans defeated the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings and conquered the Kingdom of England. They ruled as custodians and implemented an Anglo-Norman administration and made the proto-French language for the next three hundred years. Although the language and racial distinctions faded rapidly during the Middle Ages, the class system born in the Norman/Saxon has lasted to the modern day.

Although Old English continued to be spoken by common folk, Norman feudal lords significantly influenced the language with French words and customs being adopted over the succeeding centuries evolving to a Germano-Romance creole now known as Middle English widely spoken in Chaucer's time.

England came repeatedly into conflict with Wales and Scotland, as its rulers sought to expand Norman power across the entire island of Great Britain. The conquest of Wales was achieved in the 13th century; it was annexed to England and gradually become a part of that kingdom for most legal purposes, although in the modern era it is still considered a separate nation. Norman influence in Scotland waxed and waned over the years, with the Scots managing to maintain a varying degree of independence despite repeated wars with the English, in particular the Wars of Scottish Independence, and serious attempts at conquest were abandoned after the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton. Although it was on the whole only a moderately successful power in military terms, England became one of the wealthiest states in medieval Europe, due chiefly to its dominance in the lucrative wool market.

England also found itself in conflict with France, in particular during the Hundred Years' War. This failure of English territorial ambitions in continental Europe prompted the kingdom's rulers to look further afield, creating the foundations of the mercantile and colonial network that was to become the British Empire. The turmoil of the Reformation embroiled England in religious wars with Europe's Catholic powers, notably Spain, but the kingdom preserved its independence as much through luck as through the skill of charismatic rulers such as Elizabeth I. Elizabeth's successor, James I was already king of Scotland (as James VI); and this personal union of the two crowns was followed a century later by the Act of Union 1707, which formally unified England, Scotland, and Wales into the Kingdom of Great Britain. This later became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801 to 1927) and then the modern state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1927 to present).

2.3. Languages Spoken

The authentic Old English language is identifiable, for the first time, in the oldest surviving epic poems of Beowulf.As its name suggests, the English language, today spoken by hundreds of millions of people around the world, originated as the language of England, where it is still the principal tongue today. However, the English language does vary slightly in different places. An Indo-European language in Anglo-Frisian branch of the Germanic family, it is closely related to Scots and Frisian. As the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms merged into England, "Old English" emerged; some of its literature and poetry has survived.

Used by aristocracy and commoners alike before the Norman Conquest (1066), English was displaced in cultured contexts under the new regime by the Norman French language of the new Anglo-French aristocracy. Its use was confined primarily to the lower social classes while official business was conducted in a mixture of Latin and French. Over the following centuries, however, English gradually came back into fashion among all classes and for all official business except certain traditional ceremonies. (Some survive to this day.) But Middle English, as it had by now become, showed many signs of French influence, both in vocabulary and spelling. During the Renaissance, many words were coined from Latin and Greek origins; and more recent years, Modern English has extended this custom, being always remarkable for its far-flung willingness to incorporate foreign-influenced words.

The law does not recognise any language as being official, but English is the only language used in England for general official business. The other national languages of the UK (Welsh, Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic) are confined to their respective nations, and only Welsh is treated by law as an equal to English (and then only for organisations which do business in Wales).

The only non-Anglic native spoken language in England is the Cornish language, a Celtic language spoken in Cornwall, which became extinct in the 19th century but has been revived and is spoken in various degrees of fluency by around 3,500 people. This has no official status (unlike Welsh) and is not required for official use, but is nonetheless supported by national and local government under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Cornwall County Council has produced a draft strategy to develop these plans. There is, however, no programme as yet for public bodies to actively promote the language. Scots is spoken by some adjacent to the Anglo-Scottish Border.

Most deaf people within England speak British sign language (BSL), a sign language native to Britain. The British Deaf Association estimates that 70,000 people throughout the UK speak BSL as their first or preferred language, but does not give statistics specific to England. Unlike Cornish, BSL is an official language of the UK although most British government departments and hospitals still do not cater for deaf people. The BBC broadcasts several of its programmes with BSL interpreters.

Different languages from around the world, especially from the former British Empire and the Commonwealth of Nations, have been brought to England by immigrants. Many of these are widely spoken within ethnic minority communities, with Bengali, Punjabi, Greek, Turkish and Cantonese being the most common languages that people living in Britain consider their first language. These are often used by official bodies to communicate with the relevant sections of the community, particularly in big cities, but this occurs on an "as needed" basis rather than as the result of specific legislative ordinances. Other languages have also traditionally been spoken by minority populations in England, including Romany.

Despite the relatively small size of the nation, there are a large number of distinct English regional accents. Those with particularly strong accents may not be easily understood elsewhere in the country. Use of foreign non-standard varieties of English (such as Caribbean English) is also widespread.

2.4. Culture

It is sometimes difficult to separate clearly he culture of the England from that of the United Kingdom, so influential has English culture been on the cultures of the British Isles and, on the other hand, given the extent to which other cultures have influenced life in England. It has also been spread over large parts of the globe due to the British Empire.

England has produced many famous authors including William Shakespeare, the most famous in the history of the English language. This tradition has continued with authors like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and J.R.R. Tolkien, who are all often considered the greatest writers of their time.

Composers from England did not achieve the same reconition in comparison to their literary counterparts often overshowdowed by European composers. However, in popular music English bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones have achived success only rivaled by U.S. music. England is also credited for being the birth place of many pop culture movements, notably punk.

3.Wales/Cymru

From geographical point of view Wales (or Cymru, the welsh name of the country) is a highland country with hills and mountains. The highest one is Snowdonia placed in the northwest. Most of the population settlements lie in the southern valleys and the lower lying coastal areas. The important urban centres are Cardiff, Swansea, Newport and Wrexham. Prince Charles, the heir of the throne, was invested by the Queen with the title of Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle in 1969, when he was 20, and, from then on welsh is called to be a principality.

The language spoken is of Celtic origin, called Welsh and it is equally treated by law as it is used in law courts and in school and in any official purposes and in broadcasting. There is also a Welsh language Board that advises on matters related to the Welsh language.

At the beginning of the XX century the Anglican Church has been disestablished by the adherents of Methodism and Baptist church that spread rapidly in Wales in the eighteen century, being strongly supported by the industrial communities. The late decades are characterized by the expansion of service industry and the development of a wide range of manufacturing industries of the forefront technology. Electronics, information, technology, automotive components, chemicals and materials and business of new high technology have emerged recently. The most remarkable growth has been registered in financial and business services and leisure services. The traditional industries of coal and steel have gradually contracted, although they continued to be equipped to improve efficiency and productivity.

Agriculture represents 80 percent of land area, the main activities being sheep and cattle rearing in the hill regions and diary farming in the lowlands. The biggest pumped - storage power station in Europe is at Dimwit in Gwynedd. Modern motorways link Severn Bridge to Southern England and Midlands, and high - speed rail services to different destination in Europe.

Tourism has expanded substantially by the development of coastal resorts and three National Parks (Snowdonia, Breton Beacons and the Pembrokeshire Coast). Garden Festival Wales is a major tourism and leisure event held every summer in Ebbw Vale.

3.1. Country's Name Etymology

The name of Wales is a German originates from the Germanic word Walha, meaning stranger or foreigner. As the Celts of Gaul were Romanized, the word changed its meaning to "Romanic people", as it is still kept in the name of the Walloons of Belgium, Wallachia in Romania, as well as the "wall" of Cornwall. The Welsh themselves name their country Cymru, which is thought to have meant 'countrymen' in Old Welsh. Part of the word "Cymru" (pronounced cumree) is evident in the "Cum-" of Cumberland and Cumbria.

3.2. National Symbols

The flag of Wales is represented by the red Dragon of Prince of Cadwalader along with the Tudor colours - green and white. First used by Henry VII at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 and then it was carried to St. Paul's Cathedral . The Red Dragon is also considered as a symbol of Wales as it is considered the standard of King Arthur .

The leek is considered also to reprezent a form of protection and recognition as it was worn by the Welsh soldiers on their helmets to be reconised by their commanders. Its wearing was ordered by Saint David when the battle asgainst the Saxons was held in a leek field.

On St. David's Day the Welsh people weare a daffodil, as a symbol of the saint on the first if March.

3.3. Language

The official languages in Wales are English and Welsh. English is spoken by almost all people in Wales and is the de facto main language, with the local dialect being Welsh English. However, Wales is officially bilingual, with 20.5% of the population able to speak Welsh and a larger proportion having some knowledge of the Welsh language, although few residents of Wales are monolingual in Welsh. The Welsh Language Act 1993 and the Government of Wales Act 1998 provide that the Welsh and English languages should be treated on a basis of equality. Public bodies are required to prepare and implement a Welsh Language Scheme. Thus the Welsh Assembly, local councils, police forces, fire services and the health sector use Welsh as an official language, issuing official literature and publicity in Welsh versions (e.g. letters to parents from schools, library information, and council information). All road signs in Wales should be in English and Welsh, including both versions of place names where names or versions exist in both languages e.g. Cardiff and Caerdydd

3.4. Historical Background

Humans first inhabited what is now Wales at the end of the last Ice Age. The first documented history was during the Roman occupation of Britain. At that time the area of modern Wales was divided into many tribes, of which the Silures in the south-east and the Ordovices in the central and north-west areas were the largest and most powerful. The Romans established a string of forts across what is now southern Wales, as far west as Carmarthen (Maridunum), and mined gold at Dolaucothi in Carmarthenshire. There is evidence that they progressed even further west. They also built the legionary fortress at Caerleon (Isca), whose magnificent amphitheatre is the best preserved in Britain. The Romans were also busy in northern Wales, and an old legend claims that Magnus Maximus, one of the last emperors, married Elen or Helen, the daughter of a Welsh chieftain from Segontium, near present-day Caernarfon. It was in the 4th century during the Roman occupation that Christianity was introduced to Wales.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire in Britain during 410, Wales became divided into several kingdoms. Attempts by the Anglo-Saxon tribes to invade these kingdoms failed due to the fierce resistance of its people and its mountainous terrain. An Anglo-Saxon king, Offa of Mercia, is credited with having constructed a great earth wall, or dyke, along the border with his kingdom, to mark off a large part of Powys which he had conquered. Parts of Offa's Dyke can still be seen today.

The eastern lands lost to English settlement became known in Welsh as Lloegyr, the 'lost lands', and eventually became the modern Welsh name for England. The Anglo-Saxons, in turn, labelled the Romano-British as Walha, meaning 'foreigner' or 'stranger'. The Welsh countinued to call themselves as Brythoniaid (Britons) until as late as the 12th century, though the first use of Cymru and y Cymry were recorded as early as 633 by Aneirin. In the Armes Prydain written in about 930, the use of Cymry and Cymro was used as often as 15 times. It wasn't until the 12th century however, that Cymry overtook Brythoniaid in their writtings.

Following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the independence of Wales was gradually eroded. In 1282, Edward I of England defeated Llywelyn the Last, Wales's last independent Prince, in battle. Edward constructed a series of great stone castles in order to keep the Welsh under control. The best known are at Beaumaris, Caernarfon, Conwy, and Harlech. Wales was legally annexed by the Laws in Wales Act 1535, in the reign of Henry VIII of England, who was actually Welsh. The Wales and Berwick Act 1746 provided that all laws that applied to England would automatically apply to Wales unless the law explicitly stated otherwise.

3.5. Food

About 80% of the land surface of Wales is given over to agricultural use. Very little of this is arable land though as the vast majority consists of permanent grass or rough grazing for herd animals. Although both beef and dairy cattle are raised widely, especially in Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, Wales is more well-known for its sheep farming, and thus lamb is the meat traditionally associated with Welsh cooking. Some traditional dishes include laverbread (made from seaweed), bara brith (fruit bread), cawl cennin (leek stew), Welsh cakes, Welsh rarebit (cheese on toast), and Welsh lamb. Cockies are sometimes served with breakfast.

3.5. Music

Wales is known as the home of many musicians and musical styles. Wales is particularly famous for harpists, male voice choirs, and solo artists including Tom Jones, Charlotte Church, Bryn Terfel, Katherine Jenkins, Shirley Bassey, and Aled Jones. Indie bands like Catatonia, Stereophonics, The Manic Street Preachers, Feeder, Super Furry Animals, and Gorkys Zygotic Mynci, in the 1990s, and later Goldie Lookin' Chain, McLusky, Lostprophets, Funeral for a Friend and Bullet for my Valentine. Also from Wales are Aphex Twin and his record label, Rephlex Records, who are resposible for some of the electronic music made today. The Welsh folk music scene, long overshadowed by its Irish and Scottish cousins, is in resurgence. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales performs in Wales and internationally. The world-renowned Welsh National Opera now has a permanent home at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay.

4. Scotland

Scotland comprises the northern third of the island of Great Britain, off the coast of north west Europe. Scotland's only land border is with England, and runs between the River Tweed on the east coast and the Solway Firth in the west. Scotland lies between the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea and it extends is established by the Treaty of York between Scotland and England and by the 1266 Treaty of Perth between Scotland and Norway. Exceptions include the Isle of Man, which is now a crown dependency outside the United Kingdom, Orkney and Shetland, which are Scottish rather than Norwegian, and Berwick-upon-Tweed, which was defined as subject to the laws of England by the 1746 Wales and Berwick Act. Rockall was annexed by the United Kingdom in and administratively made part of the Isle of Harris in Scotland, although this is disputed by the Republic of Ireland, Iceland and Denmark.

The country consists of a mainland area plus several island groups. The mainland can be divided into three areas: the Highlands in the north; the Central Belt and the Southern Uplands in the south. The Highlands are generally mountainous and are bisected by the Great Glen. The highest mountains in the British Isles are found here, including Ben Nevis of 1,344 metres (4,409ft). All mountains over 3,000 feet are known as Munros. The Central Belt of Scotland is generally flat and is where most of the population reside. The Central Belt contains the areas West Coas around Glasgow and the East Coast which includes the areas around the capital, Edinburgh. The Southern Uplands are a range of hills and mountains almost 200 km (125 miles) long, stretching from Stranraer by the Irish Sea to East Lothian and the North Sea.

Scotland has over 790 islands, divided into four main groups: Shetland, Orkney, and the Hebrides. Firth of Forth also contain many islandsof which St. Kilda is the most remote of all the inhabitable Scottish islands, over 160 km (100 miles) from the mainland.

4.1. Country's Name's Etymology

The word Scot was borrowed from Latin and its use to refer to Scotland dates from at least the first half of the 10th century, when it first appeared in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a reference to the Land of the Gaels, analogous to the Latin Scotia. Scottish kings adopted the title Basileus Scottorum or Rex Scottorum (meaning High King of the Gaels), and Rex Scotiae (King of Gael-land) some time in the 11th century, likely influenced by the style Imperator Scottorum known to have been employed by Brian Boru in Ireland in .

In modern times the word Scot is applied equally to all inhabitants regardless of their ancestral ethnicity or sexuality (in the case of Baird), since the nation has had a civic, rather than a monoculturally ethnic or linguistic, orientation for most of the last millennium.

4.2. Languages

Since the United Kingdom lacks a codified constitution, there is no official language. However, Scotland has three officially-recognised languages: English, Scottish Gaelic and Scots. De facto English is the main language, and almost all Scots speak Scottish Standard English. Scots and Gaelic were recognised under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages ratified by the UK in .

Over the past century the number of native speakers of Gaelic, the Celtic language similar to Irish, has declined from around 5% to just 1% of the population. Gaelic is spoken mostly in the Western Isles, where the local council uses the Gaelic name- Comhairle nan Eilean Siar ("Council of the Western Isles"). Under the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 passed by the Scottish Parliament English and Gaelic receive "equal respect" but do not have equal legal status.

It is estimated that 30% of the population are fluent in Scots, a West Germanic sister language to English. State support for Scots is slowly growing, after nearly three centuries of suppression. The Scottish Executive provides some funding to various Scots language projects and bodies.

4.3. Historical Background

It is believed that the first settlers of this part of land arrived around 11,000 years ago, as the ice sheet retreated after the last ice age. They began building their first permanent houses around 9,500 years ago, and the first significant villages around 6,000 years ago. But the written history of Scotland largely began with the arrival of the Roman Empire in southern and central Great Britain, when the Romans occupied what is now England and Wales, administering it as a Roman province called Britannia. The Southern Scotland fell briefly, and indirectly under the control of Rome. To the north was territory not conquered by the Romans: Caledonia peopled by the Picts that became dominant under the sub-kingdom of Kenneth I of Scotland who became King of the Picts and Scots in 873.

In the centuries to come of the Middle Ages, the Kingdom of the Scots expanded and established relatively good relations with the Wessex rulers of England. During the reign of King Indulf ( - ), the Scots captured the fortress later called Edinburgh, their first foothold in Lothian. The reign of Malcolm II saw fuller incorporation of these territories. The critical year was perhaps , when Malcolm II defeated the Northumbrians at the Battle of Carham.

The Norman Conquest of England in initiated a chain of events which made the Kingdom of Scotland move away from its originally Gaelic cultural orientation. Malcolm III married Margaret the sister of Edgar Ætheling the deposed Anglo-Saxon claimant to the throne of England, who subsequently received some Scottish support. Margaret played a major role in reducing the influence of Celtic Christianity. When her youngest son David I later succeeded, Scotland gained something of its own gradual "Norman Conquest". Having previously become an important Anglo-Norman lord through marriage, David I had an important role in introducing feudalism into Scotland and in encouraging an influx of settlers from the Low Countries to the newly-founded burghs, to enhance trading links with mainland Europe and Scandinavia. By the late 13th century, scores of Norman and Anglo-Norman families had been granted Scottish lands. The first meetings of the Parliament of Scotland were convened during this period.

After the death of the Maid of Norway, last direct heir of Alexander III of Scotland, Scotland's nobility asked the King of England to adjudicate between rival claimants to the vacant Scottish throne, but Edward I of England, instead, attempted to install a puppet monarchy in the country and control it. The Scots resisted, however, under the leadership of Sir William Wallace and Andrew de Moray in support of John Balliol, and later under that of Robert the Bruce. He was crowned as King Robert I on March 25, , won a decisive victory over the English at the Battle of Bannockburn in June . Warfare flared up again in Scotland after his death in the Wars of Scottish Independence from to in which Edward Balliol attempted unsuccessfully to win back the throne from Bruce's heirs, with the support of the English king. Eventually, with the emergence of the Stewart dynasty in the 1370s, the political atmosphere began a leveling process.

By the end of the Middle Ages, the Scots-speaking Lowlands, and the Gaelic-speaking Highlands divided the Scottish culture into two trends. However, Galwegian Gaelic persisted in use in remote parts of the southwest, which had formed part of the Lordship of Galloway. Historically, the Lowlanders were closer to mainstream European culture. The dominant clan system of the Highlands remained one of the region's more distinctive features until after the Acts of Union 1707.

In , the Scottish King James VI of Scotland became also James I of England by inheriting the throne of the Kingdom of England.With the exception of a short period under The Protectorate, Scotland remained a separate state, but there was considerable conflict between the crown and the church government. After the Glorious Revolution and the overthrow of the Roman Catholic James VII by William and Mary, Scotland briefly threatened to select a different Protestant monarch from England. In , the English threatened to end trade and free movement across the border, so the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England enacted the twin Acts of Union, which created the Kingdom of Great Britain.

The Jacobite risings in the west of Scotland in and failed to remove the House of Hanover from the British throne. The deposed Jacobite Stuart claimants had remained popular in the Highlands and north-east, particularly amongst non-Presbyterians.

Following the Scottish Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, Scotland became one of the commercial, intellectual and industrial forces of Europe. Its industrial decline following World War II was particularly acute, but in recent decades the country has enjoyed significant cultural and economic renaissance supported by active and efficient financial services and electronics sector, the proceeds of North Sea oil and gas, and latterly the devolved Scottish Parliament, established by the UK government under the Scotland Act 1998.

4.4. Economy

Most of the Scotland population live in the industrial towns in the central lowlands: Edinburgh (the capital), Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee, but there is also a sparsely population in highlands and the islands in the North.

From economic point of view, it must be mentioned that the discovery of oil and gas under the northern North Sea, in the early 1970, had significant impact on the economic development of the area, as it assured an important amount of jobs directly or indirectly arisen from this activity. Since then the traditional industries, such as coal, steel and shipbuilding have declined, but the newly appeared ones (chemical, electronic engineering, food, drink and tobacco) provide more than half of Britain's output and 10 percent of Western Europe industry. High quality tweed and textiles, food and drink products are still important. The export figure of Scotch whisky industry is around 2 million. 70 per cent of the work force is now engaged in services that have developed in the late decades: banking, finance, insurance and tourism. One third of Britain's agricultural land is placed in Scotland and 70 per cent of it is used for rough grazing for cattle and sheep, the rest of it is used for barley crop used for making whisky and beer. Scotland also accounts for nearly half of Britain's forest area and for over one third of timber production. 75 per cent of the total landings of fish in Britain are made at Scotland ports. Nuclear and hydroelectric generation supply an important quantity of energy for the whole country.

4.5. Culture

Many Scotish are shared with Europe and the wider Western world. However, distinct cultural differences are identifiable in many areas. There exists a strong, distinct Scottish national identity, firmly founded in a shared commitment to Scottish civil society.

4.5.1. Literature

Scottish literature is mainly represented by Robert Burns (1759 - 1796), widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland. He wrote poems and songs.especially in Scots language. At various times in his career, he wrote in English, and in these pieces, his political or civil commentary is often at its most blunt. He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement and after his death became an important source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism. He is still a cultural icon in Scotland and among Scots who have relocated to other parts of the world (the Scottish diaspora), his celebration became almost a national charismatic cult during periods of the 19th and 20th centuries, as his influence has long been strong on Scottish literature.

Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His works are celebrated annually on Burns' Night (January 25). Other famous Scottish writers include Walter Scott, James Hogg, JM Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson; and more recently, Alexander McCall Smith, Ian Rankin, Iain Banks and Irvine Welsh. J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book, The Philosopher's Stone, in a coffee shop in Edinburgh.

4.5.2. Music

The Scottish music gives the Scottish culture a specific feature with both traditional and modern influences. The bagpipe, a wind instrument consisting of one or more musical pipes which are fed continuously by a reservoir of air in a bag ios well known in the world as being Typical Scottish The fiddle and accordion are also traditional nstruments, heavily featured in Scottish country dance bands. Traditional musicians of recent times include Andy Stewart, The Corries and the contemporary Dougie MacLean. Traditional Scottish music was taken by Scottish emigrants to North America, who made it became a major American style music, for example country music.

Modern Scottish pop music has produced many international bands including the Bay City Rollers, Primal Scream, Simple Minds, The Proclaimers, Deacon Blue, Texas, Franz Ferdinand, Belle and Sebastian,and Travis, as well as individual artists such as Gerry Rafferty, Lulu, Annie Lennox and Lloyd Cole, and world-famous Gaelic groups such as Runrig and Capercaillie. These have been joined by Gaelic punk bands such as Oi Polloi who give an ancient culture a new voice.

4.5.3. Sport

Scotland has its own sporting competitions and governing bodies, such as the Scottish Football League and the Scottish Rugby Union. This gives the country independent representation at many international sporting events, for example the football World Cup and the Commonwealth Games; although notably not the Olympic Games.

Association Football is the most popular sport in the country, both played and watched, and The Scottish Cup is the world's oldest national trophy. Scottish professional rugby union clubs compete in the Celtic League. Shinty is run by the Camanachd Association and is played primarily in its Highland heartland, but also in most universities and cities. Scotland is the "Home of Golf", and of curling and is well-known for its many links courses, including the Old Course at St Andrews.

Northern Ireland - the Emerald Island

5.1 Irish Symbols

The tricolor flag of Ireland was introduced by Thomas Francis Meagher in 1848. The color of the green represents the Irish people, the orange represents the English supporters of "William of Orange" and the white color represents peace.

In ancient Ireland the Shamrock was thought to have magical powers and the number 3 was considered a powerful number. Legends say the leaves will stand upright when a storm approaches and that no snake will be found among them. When St. Patrick came to Ireland he used the Shamrock to symbolize the meaning of the church's teaching on the Trinity. The word Shamrock comes from the old Irish word "seamrog" which means "summer plant."

The harp has long been a symbol of Ireland. Perhaps the legends of it's magical powers comes from the time when the bards would sing and tell stories of famous events to the Irish kings and chiefs. During the early 1500s, under the rule of Henry VIII, the harp was first depicted on Irish coins. That tradition is carried on today and the harp is also used for other official duties such as the Irish state seal, official documents and uniforms.

The Celtic Cross is told in legend of Ireland's St. Patrick. He was shown a sacred standing stone that was marked with a circle. St. Patrick took this opportunity to show the union of old and new ways. He marked a cross through the circle and blessed the stone.

5.2. Language

Irish (Gaeilge), a Goidelic language spoken in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, is constitutionally recognised as the first official language of the Republic of Ireland. On 13 June , EU foreign ministers unanimously decided to make Irish an official language of the European Union. The new arrangements will come into effect on 1 January . According to statistics there are approximately 1.6 million speakers of Irish in the Republic, 165,000 can speak Irish in Northern Ireland and 25,000 people use the language at home in the United States.

5.3. Historical Background

The first humans inhabited Ireland from around 7500 BC and were later responsible for major Neolithic sites such as Newgrange. What little is known of pre-Christian Ireland comes from a few references in Roman writings, Irish poetry and myth, and archaeology. The Romans referred to Ireland as Hibernia. Ptolemy in AD 100 records Ireland's geography and tribes. Ireland was never formally a part of the Roman Empire but Roman influence was often projected well beyond formal borders. Tacitus writes that an Irish tribal chieftain was with Agricola in Britain and would return to seize power in Ireland. Juvenal tells us that Roman "arms had been taken beyond the shores of Ireland". If Rome, or an ally, did invade, they didn't leave very much behind. The exact relationship between Rome and the tribes of Hibernia is unclear.

When agriculture was introduced from the continent, a high Neolithic culture developed, characterized by the appearance of huge stone monuments, many of them astronomically aligned (most notably, Newgrange). This culture apparently prospered, and the island became more densely populated. The Bronze Age, which began around 2500 BC, saw the production of elaborate gold and bronze ornaments and weapons. The Iron Age in Ireland began about 600 BC. By the historic period (AD 431 onwards) the main over-kingdoms of In Tuisceart, Airgialla, Ulaid, Mide, Laigin, Mumhain, Cóiced Ol nEchmacht began to emerge (see Kingdoms of ancient Ireland). Within these kingdoms, despite constant strife, a rich culture flourished. The society of these kingdoms was dominated by druids: priests who served as educators, physicians, poets, diviners, and keepers of the laws and histories.

In the early Christian Ireland (400-800) the former emphasis on tribal affiliation had been replaced by patrilinial and dynastic background. Many formerly powerful kingdoms and peoples disappeared. Irish pirates struck all over the coast of western Britain and some of them founded entirely new kingdoms in Pictland, Wales and Cornwall. Perhaps it was some of the latter returning home as rich mercenaries, merchants, or slaves stolen from Britain or Gaul, that first brought the Christian faith to Ireland. Some early sources claim that there were missionaries active in southern Ireland long before St. Patrick. Whatever the route, and there were probably many, this new faith was to have the most profound effect on the Irish.

Tradition maintains that in AD 432, St. Patrick arrived on the island and, in the years that followed, worked to convert the Irish to Christianity. On the other hand, Palladius was sent to Ireland by the Pope in 431 as "first Bishop to the Irish believing in Christ", which demonstrates that, by whatever means, there were already Christians living in Ireland. Patrick is credited, possibly too much so, with preserving the tribal and social patterns of the Irish, codifying their laws and changing only those that conflicted with Christian practices. He is credited with introducing the Roman alphabet, which enabled Irish monks to preserve parts of the extensive Celtic oral literature. The druid tradition collapsed, first in the face of the spread of the new faith, and ultimately in the aftermath of famine and plagues due to the climate changes of 535-536. Irish scholars excelled in the study of Latin learning and Christian theology in the monasteries that flourished shortly thereafter. Missionaries from Ireland to England and Continental Europe spread news of the flowering of learning, and scholars from other nations came to Irish monasteries. The excellence and isolation of these monasteries helped preserve Latin learning during the Early Middle Ages. The arts of manuscript illumination, metalworking, and sculpture flourished and produced such treasures as the Book of Kells, ornate jewelry, and the many carved stone crosses that dot the island. Sites dating to this period include clochans, ringforts and promontory forts.

From around 800, more than a century of Viking invasions wreaked havoc upon the monastic culture and on the island's various regional dynasties, yet both of these institutions proved strong enough to survive and assimilate the invaders. These early raids interrupted the golden age of Christian Irish culture starting the beginning of two hundred years of intermittent warfare, with waves of Viking raiders plundering monasteries and towns throughout Ireland. Most of the early raiders came from the fjords of western Norway.

By the early 840's, the Vikings began to establish settlements along the Irish coasts and to spend the winter months there. Vikings founded settlements in Limerick, Waterford, Wexford, and most famously, Dublin. In 852, the Vikings Ivar Beinlaus and Olaf the White landed in Dublin Bay and established a fortress, on which the city of Dublin (from the Irish Gaelic An Dubh Linn meaning "the black pool") now stands. Olaf was the son of a Norwegian king and made himself the king of Dublin. After several generations a group of mixed Irish and Norse ethnic background arose (the so-called Gall-Gaels, Gall then being the Irish word for "foreigners" - the Norse). Ireland was divided into many small kingdoms called tuaths.

The language spoken by the people inhabiting the isle could belong to the Goidelic languages, a branch of the Celtic languages, and this was explained as a result of invasions of Celts. Very little archaeological evidence was found for large intrusive groups of Celtic immigrants in Ireland. The hypothesis that the native Late Bronze Age inhabitants gradually absorbed influences to create Celtic culture has since been supported by some recent genetic research.

5.3.1. The Rise and the Decline of Norman Times

By the 12th century, Ireland was divided politically into a shifting hierarchy of petty kingdoms and over-kingdoms. Power was concentrated into the hands of a few regional dynasties contending against each other for control of the whole island. One of them, the King of Leinster Diarmait Mac Murchada (anglicised as Diarmuid MacMorrough) was forcibly exiled from his kingdom, but Henry II advised him to use the Norman forces to regain his kingdom. Within a short time Waterford and Dublin were under Diarmait's control again that caused consternation to King Henry II of England, who feared the establishment of a rival Norman state in Ireland. With the authority of a papal bull from Adrian IV, Henry became the first King of England to set foot on Irish soil in 1171. He awarded his Irish territories to his younger son John with the title Dominus Hiberniae ("Lord of Ireland"), and when John unexpectedly became King John, the "Lordship of Ireland" fell directly under the English Crown. In 1315, Edward Bruce of Scotland invaded Ireland, gaining the support of many Gaelic lords against the English so that the local Irish lords won back their and held it. But in 1348 the Black Death hit the English and the Norman inhabitants of Ireland that lived in towns harder than it did the native Irish, who lived in dispersed rural settlements. After it had passed, Gaelic Irish language and customs came to dominate the country again. The English-controlled area shrunk back to the Pale, a fortified area around Dublin. But outside the Pale, the British-N orman lords adopted the Irish language and customs, becoming known as the Old English, and in the words of a contemporary English commentator, became "more Irish than the Irish themselves." Over the following centuries they sided with the indigenous Irish in political and military conflicts with England and generally stayed Catholic after the Reformation. The authorities in the Pale grew so worried about the "Gaelicisation" of Ireland that they passed special legislation in a parliament in Kilkenny (known as the Statutes of Kilkenny) banning those of English descent from speaking the Irish language, wearing Irish clothes or inter-marrying with the Irish. Since the government in Dublin had little real authority, however, the Statutes did not have much effect.

By the end of the 15th century, central English authority in Ireland had all but disappeared. England's attentions were diverted by its Wars of the Roses (civil war). The Lordship of Ireland lay in the hands of the powerful Fitzgerald Earl of Kildare, who dominated the country by means of military force and alliances with lords and clans around Ireland.

5.3.2. Consequences of Religious Reformation

While Henry VIII broke English Catholicism from Rome, his son Edward VI of England moved further, breaking with Papal doctrine completely. While the English, the Welsh and, later, the Scots accepted Protestantism, the Irish remained Catholic, that determined their relationship with the British state for the next four hundred years.The Reformation coincided also with Henry VIII decision to re-conquer Ireland, so the island would not ever be a base for future rebellions or foreign invasions of England. In 1541, Henry upgraded Ireland from a lordship to a full Kingdom. With the institutions of government in place, the next step was to extend the control of the English Kingdom of Ireland over all of its claimed territory. The re-conquest was completed during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, after several bloody conflicts. The English authorities in Dublin established real control over Ireland for the first time, bringing a centralised government to the entire island, and successfully disarmed the native lordships. However, the English were not successful in converting the Catholic Irish to the Protestant religion and the brutal methods used by crown authority to pacify the country heightened resentment of English rule.

From the mid-16th and into the early seventeenth century, crown governments carried out a policy of colonisation known as Plantations. Scottish and English Protestants were sent as colonists to the provinces of Munster, Ulster and the counties of Laois and Offaly. These settlers, who had a British and Protestant identity, would form the ruling class of future British adminstrations in Ireland and a series of Penal Laws discriminated against all faiths other than the established (Anglican) Church of Ireland. The victims of these laws were Catholics and later Presbyterians.

5.3.3. Civil Wars

The seventeenth century was perhaps the bloodiest in Ireland's history. Two periods of civil war (1641-53 and 1689-91) caused huge loss of life and resulted in the final dispossesion of the Irish Catholic landowning class and their subordination under the Penal Laws.

In the mid-seventeenth century, Ireland was convulsed by eleven years of warfare, beginning with the Rebellion of 1641, when Irish Catholics rebelled against English and Protestant domination, in the process massacring thousands of Protestant settlers. The Catholic majority briefly ruled the country as Confederate Ireland (1642-1649) until Oliver Cromwell re-conquest on behalf of the English Commonwealth. Cromwell's conquest was the most brutal phase of a brutal war. By its close, up to a third of Ireland's pre-war population was dead or in exile. As punishment for the rebellion of 1641, almost all lands owned by Irish Catholics were confiscated and given to British settlers. Forty years later, Ireland became the main battleground in the Glorious Revolution of 1689, when the Catholic James II was deposed by the English Parliament and replaced by William of Orange. Irish Catholics backed James to try to reverse the Penal Laws and land confiscations, whereas Protestants supported William to preserve their dominance in the country. James and William fought for the English, Scottish and Irish thrones in the Williamite War, most famously at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, where James's forces were defeated. Jacobite resistance was finally ended after the Battle of Aughrim in July 1691. The Penal laws (which had been allowed to lapse somewhat after the English Restoration) were re-applied with great harshness after this war, as the Protestant elite wanted to ensure that the Irish Catholic landed classes would not be in a position to repeat their rebellions of the 17th century.

5.3.4. Colonial Ireland

Most of the eighteenth century was relatively peaceful in comparison with the preceding two hundred years, but subsequent Irish antagonism towards England was aggravated by the economic situation of Ireland in the eighteenth century. Food tended to be produced for export rather than for domestic consumption. In the 1740s, the economic inequalities, along with two very cold winters, led to the Great Irish Famine (1740-1741), which killed about 400,000 people. In addition, the Navigation Acts, placed tarrifs on Irish produce entering England, but exempted English goods from tariffs on entering Ireland, endangering the Irish trade.

By the late eighteenth century a Parliamentary faction led by Henry Grattan agitated for a more favourable trading relationship with England and for legislative independence for the Parliament of Ireland. However, some were attracted to the example of the French revolution of 1789 and they formed the Society of the United Irishmen to overthrow British rule and found a non-sectarian republic. Their activity culminated in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which was bloodily suppressed. Partly in response to this rebellion, Irish self-government was abolished altogether by the Act of Union on January 1, .

5.3.5. Union with Great Britain

The Act of Union, which merged Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain (itself a union of England and Scotland, created almost 100 years earlier), created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Part of the deal for the union was that Catholic Emancipation would be conceded to remove discrimination against Catholics, Presbyterians and others. However King George III controversially blocked any change. In 1823, an enterprising Catholic lawyer, Daniel O'Connell, known as "the Great Liberator" began a successful campaign to achieve emancipation, which was finally conceded in 1829. He later led an unsuccessful campaign for "Repeal of the Act of Union".

But the second "Great Famines", An Gorta Mór struck the country severely in the period 1845-1849, with potato blight leading to mass starvation and emigration. The impact of emigration in Ireland was severe; the population dropped from over 8 million before the Famine to 4.4 million in 1911. From 1870 various British governments introduced a series of Land Acts that broke up large estates and gradually gave rural landholders and tenants what became known as the 3 Fs; Fair rent, free sale, fixity of tenure."

The Irish language, once the spoken language of the entire island, declined in use sharply in the nineteenth century as a result of the Famine and the creation of the National School education system, as well as hostility to the language from leading Irish politicians of the time; it was largely replaced by English.

In the 1870s the issue of Irish self-government and Home Rule again became a major focus of debate. Most of the island was predominantly nationalist, Catholic and agrarian. The northeast, however, was predominantly unionist, Protestant and industrialised. Unionists feared a loss of political power and economic wealth in a predominantly rural, nationalist, Catholic home rule state. Nationalists believed that they would remain economically and politically second class citizens without self-government.

5.3.6. Independence War

In September 1914, just as the First World War broke out, the UK Parliament finally passed the Third Home Rule Act to establish self-government for Ireland and made efforts to implement the Act, before the end of the war. A failed attempt was made to gain separate independence for Ireland with the 1916 Easter Rising, an insurrection in Dublin. In December 1918 Sinn Féin, the party of the rebels was elected by vote and won three-quarters of all the seats in Ireland. The MPs assembled in Dublin on 21 January 1919, to form a thirty-two county Irish Republic parliament, Dáil Éireann unilaterally, asserting sovereignty over the entire island.

The Irish Republican Army - the army of the newly declared Irish Republic - waged a guerrilla war (the Anglo-Irish War) from 1919 to 1921. The Fourth Government of Ireland Act 1920 separated the island into "Northern Ireland" and "Southern Ireland". In December 1921, representatives of both governments signed an Anglo-Irish Treaty. This created a self-governing Independent Irish State, a Dominion of the British Empire in the manner of Canada and Australia, which went on to become became the Republic of Ireland in 1949.

6. The Republic of Ireland

The treaty to sever the Union divided the republican movement into anti-Treaty (who wanted to fight on until an Irish Republic was achieved) and pro-Treaty supporters (who accepted the Free State as a first step towards full independence and unity). Between 1922 and 1923 both sides fought the bloody Irish Civil War. The new Irish Free State government defeated the anti-Treaty remnant of the Irish Republican Army. This division among nationalists still colours Irish politics today, specifically between the two leading Irish political parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

The new Irish Free State (1922-37) existed against the backdrop of the growth of dictatorships in Europe and a major world economic downturn in 1929. Eamon de Valera's Fianna Fáil was able to take power peacefully by winning the 1932 general election and in contrast to many other states in the period, it remained financially solvent. However, unemployment and emigration were high. The Catholic Church had a powerful influence over the state for much of its history.

In 1937, a new Constitution of Ireland proclaimed the state of Éire (or Ireland). The state remained neutral throughout World War II. Ireland was also hit badly by rationing of food, and coal in particular (peat production became a priority during this time). In 1949 the state was formally declared the Republic of Ireland and it left the British Commonwealth.

In the 1960s, Ireland underwent a major economic reforms; free second-level education was introduced in early 1960s, and in 1973 was admitted to the European Economic Community together with United Kingdom. The considerable investment and economic reforms imposed by European Community led to the emergence of one of the world's highest economic growth rates. This period came to be known as the Celtic Tiger and was focused on as a model for economic development in the former Eastern Bloc states.

Irish society also adopted relatively liberal social policies during this period. Divorce was legalised, homosexuality decriminalised, while a right to abortion in limited cases was granted by the Irish Supreme Court in the X Case legal judgement. Major scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, both sexual and financial, coincided with a widespread decline in religious practice, with weekly attendance at Roman Catholic Mass halving in twenty years.

7. Northern Ireland

From 1921 to 1971, Northern Ireland was governed by the Ulster Unionist Party government, based at Stormont in East Belfast. Discrimination against the minority nationalist community in jobs and housing, and their total exclusion from political power due to the majoritarian electoral system, led to the emergence of a civil rights campaign in the late 1960s, inspired by Martin Luther King's civil rights movement in the United States of America. A violent counter-reaction from right-wing unionists and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) led to civil disorder. To restore order, British troops were deployed to the streets of Northern Ireland at this time. They had its own devolved Parliament in which the Protestant Unionists consistently formed the majority and constituted the Government. The Nationalists felt dominated and excluded from the political office. Sectarian disturbances developed although human rights reforms were introduces in late 60's, and Army troops were sent to support the police in keeping order. Subsequently, terrorist actions from both sides started, but mostly from the Provisional Irish Republican Army who claims to protect the Roman Catholic minority. Despite the reform programme, the violence continued, leading to the decision that the British Government take over responsibility for law and order in 1972. The Northern Ireland Government protested by resigning and directs rule began. Nowadays, Northern Ireland is still a subject of direct ruling under the legislation passed in 1974, by the Parliament in Westminster. The government departments are under the direction and control of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland who is a Cabinet minister. In January 1974 an agreement between Northern Ireland political parties to form a power-sharing executive collapsed because of the protest strike by "loyalists". The Agreement committed both governments under the auspices of the international law to the principle that Northern Ireland would remain part of Britain as long as that would be the wish of a majority.

After lengthy consultations in 1991 with the four main constitutional parties - the Ulster Unionists, Democratic Unionists, Alliance Party and Social Democratic and Labour Party - another agreement was reached by which the two governments made clear that they were prepared to consider a new and more broadly based Anglo - Irish Agreement of one could be arrived at through direct discussions and negotiations in the talks.

Tensions came to a head with the events of Bloody Sunday and Bloody Friday, and the worst years (early 1970s) of what became known as The Troubles resulted. The Stormont government was prorogued in 1971 and abolished totally in 1972. Paramilitary private armies such as the Provisional IRA, the Official IRA, the INLA, the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force fought each other and the British army.

For the next 27 years, Northern Ireland was under "direct rule" with a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the British Cabinet responsible for the departments of the Northern Ireland executive/government. Principal acts were passed by the United Kingdom Parliament in the same way as for much of the rest of the UK. During the 1970s British policy concentrated on defeating the IRA by military means. In the 1980s the IRA attempted to secure a military victory based on massive arms shipments from Libya. When this failed, senior republicans began to look to broaden the struggle from purely military means. In 1986 the British and Irish governments signed the Anglo Irish Agreement signaling a formal partnership in seeking a political solution. Socially and economically Northern Ireland suffered the worst levels of unemployment in the UK and although high levels of public spending ensured a slow modernisation of public services and moves towards equality, progress was slow in the 70s and 80s, only in the 1990s when progress towards peace became tangible, did the economic situation improve.

Recently, the Belfast Agreement ("Good Friday Agreement") of April 10, 1998 brought a degree of power sharing to Northern Ireland, giving both unionists and nationalists control of limited areas of government. However, both the power-sharing Executive and the elected Assembly have been suspended since October 2002 following a breakdown in trust between the political parties. Efforts to resolve outstanding issues, including "decommissioning" of paramilitary weapons, policing reform and the removal of British army bases are continuing. On July 28, 2005, the Provisional IRA (PIRA) announced the end of its armed campaign and on September 25, 2005 international weapons inspectors supervised the full disarmament of the PIRA.

8. Ireland Culture

8.1. Literature:

Jonathan Swift 1667-1745 is considered the Greatest English writer ofg his time and one of the largest satirist ever existed. His family was of English extraction, setteld in Ireland, but he went back to England to complete his studies where he meets Stella to which he will be forever connected. He becomes a parish priest, but hew also participates to political activity. He supports Tory party with his pamphlets and articles. When political favourites fell, he went back to Ireland and he becomes the dean of the chutch St. Patrick in Dublin. In this period he exposes the oppressions to which the Irish people (even he despise them ) are subject by English and local government. After the death of his beloved he becomes mentally disordered that worsened until his death.

Gulliver's Travel, 1724 is his masterpiece. It is a satire of human race, civilisation and Anglo-Irish (his fellow countrymen are the wild Yahoo) Lemuel Gulliver, doctor on a merchant ship, is shipwrecked on the island of Liliput, where everything, beginning by the inhabitants, is large a fifteenth of person and objects we know. In the second part instead, Gulliver visit Brobdignmag, where the ratio is turned upsidedown and where the doctor becomes the preferred of the king's daughter , who keeps him between her toys. In the third part Gulliver visits Laputa and the continent that has Lagada as capital. In the island Glubdrubdrib then, Gulliver evokes the shadows of great men. Of antiquity and from their answers he discovers their bad habits and meanness, while among the immortal Struldbrug he notices that the largest sadness for theman wou;d be the perspective of not goimg en end to tedium vitae. In the fourth part, then, the virtuous easiness of the Houyhnhnm horses contrasts with the brutality of the Yahoo beasts with a human aspect.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900)

Born in Dublin, in a family of a famous ophtalmologist and a mother that was a supportive of the Irish independence cause. He travelles to France, Italy Greece and North Africa. In 1895 he is sentenced for homosexuality to 2 years of hard labour (the Ballad of reading Goal). Fallen into poverty and deserted by everyone, he flees away to Paris where he dies of abuse of alcohol. Although he has never had good relationship with Ireland, he commended the "clever Celtic genius "to embelish the English language.

The Picture Of Dorian Grey

The mostly well known work is "The Portrait of Dorian Grey"- a manifesto of decandentism and aestheticism. The painter Hallvard portrays a young man of exceptional beauty, Dorian Grey. Dorian, the real model, eager of pleasures and influenced by the cynical Henry Wotton, abandons himself to depravity, as more as he knows that the worse escapades woun't leave any trace on his face: by magic, only his portrait will get old, so he lives by his foolishness. His degradation doesn't have limits: he will even kill Hallward who reproaches him such shame. But the horrible face of his portrait becomes gradually the most cruel accusation act for Dorian, who, in desperate impulse slashes it with a stab. But it is him who falls dead: the portrait features return to those of young and pure Dorian portrait, while on background lies an old man repugnant and obscene.

Salomé

Famous play written in French that gained large success in a musical arrangement by Richard Strauss in 1905.

Laurence Sterne (1713-1760)

Son of an English officer and an Irish woman. He goes to the Grammar School and then he enters at the Jesus College in Cambridge. His preference for classics he becomes fond of philosophy of John Locke. His ecclesiastical career in the Anglican Church is doubled by his participation in the local political life. He writes polemical political articles and letters. As a Vicar of Yorkshire he preaches eccentric sermons. In 1760 he publishes Tristam Shandy that produces sensation for the originality of its literary style. When he comes back from his travels in Italy, France and Greece he also publishes Letters from Yorick to Elisa.

The Life and Opinion of Tristam Shandy

The unusual and bizzare modern novel with experimental narrative structures and topics of absurdities and contradictions, it levels social conventions of his time. Reality proceeds according to associations of ideas, digressions and overturnings of chronological consistency and the cause and effect relationship. At the end of the novel the thematic changes radically. The reader finds out very little about very subject itself because the work is unfinished. Tristam is born at the half of it and it reaches only his youth. The real plot laks, as the work digresses about anything and it is full of white pages , erasures, and a whole chapter of interjections and other bizzare things.

Bram Stocker (1847-1912)

Although he is a graduate of Mathematics he works in public administration. He is impressed by the actor Henry Irving, famous for his role of Frankenstein and he follows him to London as a friend. He begins to write some tales and in 1897 he publishes Dracula that it becomes a great success.

Dracula

The most important gothic novel. Influenced by Carmilla by Le Fanu and mathematically documented from books, maps from the British Museum and searches on the superstitions about vampire'folklore and on a Romanian Middle Ages runner - Vlad Tepes, the novel is written as a diary and places the story in Transylvania, as a nest of strange traditions. The people's writings are enriched by letters, notes, press cuttings.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873)

He graduates Trinity College in Jurisprudence. He gains reputation especially for tales inspired from local rural tradition that stir ancient pagan reminiscence with Christian veneration. He narrates about restless phantoms in solitary castles, about fairies, gnoms and leprechauns who live in forests and kidnap children, about bewitches animals and fantastic creatures who lay traps in the forest. He publishes some tales of this sort on the "Dublin University Magazine" and then several historical novel inspired byWalter Scott. Shortly before his death he publishes the tales collection "Chronicles of Golden Friers", and "In a Glass Darkly".

Camilla

Inspired from rural tradition about ghosts and vampires. The writer studied Central European legends to make depth to his characters of dead-live blood drinker that will inspire the writers to come.

William Butler Yeats (1862-1939)

He was born in a family of an English origin painter close to pre-Raphaelitism (John Butler Yeats). His mother was coming from a family of a protestant unionist shipowner and traders. He graduates the Metropoliutan Schoole of Art in Dublin where he meets George Russel with which he has a common interest for ocultism from which he will continue. He published his first poetry collection "The Wonderings of Oisin" in 1889 and he founds the Irish Literary Society in 1892. After the encounter with the brilliant comedian J.M. Synge, Yeats dedicates himself to the Irish popular theatre. In 1899 he founds the irish Theatre Compny and then he opens the Abbey Theatre. Here are some of the main poetry works that made William Butler Yeats a representative Irish poet:

Green Helmet

Responsiblities 1914

The Wild Swans at Coole 1919

Michael Robartes and the Dancer 1921 - it makes the separation between the crepuscular poetry and the concretness of language, a lesson taught by Ezra Pound and William Blake

George Augustus More (1852-1933)

Born in a well-off family he receives education in Oscot, Birmingham and London. From 1872 he goes to Paris where he studies painting and gets closer to aestheticism and naturalism and writes "A Modern Lover", 1883 - a scandalous but realistic portrait of amusements and leisures of a man of his time, A Mummer's Wife, Esther Waters - a story of a nun who has a son and finds herself in having to finght against difficulties due to her maternity. In 1901 he returns to Dublin where he keeps publishing and involving in the development of Irish Renainssance (Rebirth of the Gaelic Literature) and also in politics.

James Augustine Joyce (1882-1941)

He studied at the famous Jesuit College Clongowes Wood College and Belvedere College. In 1898 he goes to University College of Dublin where he begins to manifest a nonconformist and rebel behaviour. He writes articles and delivers lectures in defending the theatre of Ibsen, considered, at that time, immoral and subversive. He publishes the Day of Herd, a pamphlet where he rails at provincialism of Irish culture. After having taken his degree in arts he continues his studies in medicine , moving to Paris. He publishes "A Portrait of the Artist", an autobiographic essy that is to become later A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. He also composes many poems later collected in the volume "Chamber of Music", and some sotires in the Newspaper Irish Homestead" that will be later comprised in "Dubliners". He meets Nora Bernacle, a maid who works in Dublin and she will be his companion for the rest of his life. They leave the country to live in foreign places :Zurich, Pola, and finally Trieste where he earns his living as an English teacher. At Trieste he becomes involved in the local cultural environment collaborating with newspapers (Il piccolo della Sera), and delivers lectures on Irish topics. Then he decides to come back to Dublin where he opens a cinema hall business. Disaponted and disconsolate for his bankruptcy but also for the rejection of his works to be published, he leaves Ireland for ever. In 1913 he meets Ezra Pound who encourages him to write and publish. He finally publishes "Dubliners" in London and also a serial issue of "Dedalus" and begins the work to "Ulysses". During the war he moves to Zurich where he obtains a subsidy from the British Royal Literary Fund.

He is marked by a serious eye disease makes him nearly blind and by his daughter mental disturbancyand he is forced to leave her in a clinic after violet manifest. In 1939, at the beginning of the war, he moves back to Zurich and after having published Finnegans Wake he he dies in a surgery.

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)

He belongs to an Irish-British family. He completes his studies at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen and then at Trinity College. As a student he starts working at his books and poems in English and he publishes his first collection in 1935: "Murphy". He is a frienf of James Joyce and in 1938 he moves to Paris where he starts to write in French. It will become his literary language as he chose it for most of his works. Between 1951-1953 he publishes the trlogy of inner monologue - Maloy, Malone meurt, L'innomable which embody the idea of loniless of contemporary man who cannot know himself, who is divided into a conscience that observes and is observed. Together with Eugen Ionesco he opens new literary ways in theatre of absurdity - silence and pure mimic representations: Fin de Partie, Actes sans paroles, Oh, les beaux jours. He is awarded Nobel Prize for literature in 1969.

8.2. Music

The music of a people always reflects their history to one degree or another. Nowhere is this more true than in Ireland, where layers of the past literally crumble on top of one another. Even the most cutting-edge bands often harbor the plaintive modal tuning favored by the bards of old, or the soulful timbre of tin flutes and fiddles, or a hint of wheezing bagpipes.

The first thing to realize about authentic Irish instrumental music is that much of it is meant for dancing. The tunes range from four-to-the bar reels to various types of jigs, which can be either sprightly or stately. Most jigs are in 6/8, but there is an older style known as a "slip jig" that trips along in a 9/8 time signature. Dances from abroad, such as waltzes and polkas, have been gradually transformed into recognizably Irish versions. Scandinavian tunes turn up, although whether these date from the early Viking invasions of Ireland or from later encounters is hard to prove. Most dance tunes, wherever they originated, favor modal tuning and a circular construction that allows for endless repetitions and smooth transitions between selections. There is also a sizable repertoire of instrumental "slow airs", which are strictly for reflective listening. Aside from giving the dancers a chance to catch their breath, they are wistful, tender microcosms of race memory.

The instruments vary relatively little from ensemble to ensemble, and may be either electric or acoustic, but an astonishing array of sounds are drawn from them. Fiddles, wood flutes, tin whistles, and squeezeboxes are commonly used, augmented by guitars and by the bouzouki, a plangent-toned Greek lute that has become very popular with Irish musicians. The bodhrán, a hand-held goatskin wooden frame drum, marks the time. The whole is sometimes embellished by the plaintively reedy sound of the uilleann pipes, a small bagpipe peculiar to Ireland. The pipes are an important solo instrument, especially for "slow airs", which are among the oldest surviving types of Irish music. The clarseach (Irish harp), in a modern nylon or gut stringed incarnation, or in the more antique metal-stringed version, has made a strong come-back from nearly total obscurity. It is once again a living symbol of Ireland and its music.

The present fascination with traditional music and songs sung in the Irish language actually dates from the mid-1960's, when the composer-arranger-musicologist Sean Ó'Raida began a grass-roots Celtic revival. Until he took action, most popular songs in Ireland were sung in English, and the lyrics generally spoke about the forthright pleasures of the jug and romantic vicissitudes or else keened over deceased Republican heroes and incited insurrection. The fragile Bardic strain turned up now and again, but most Gaelic music languished outside of the popular imagination, in Irish-speaking enclaves (gaeltachts) in the West and South. O'Riada also rescued the Irish harp from oblivion, although in a gut-stringed version that the Bards would hardly have recognized, and introduced the Bodhrán (hand-held goatskin frame drum) into general use. His own ensemble was called Ceoltoiri Chualann, and out of it came the core membership of Ireland's best-known traditional music group, The Chieftains. By the end of his short life, Sean Ó'Raida had reclaimed Ireland's soul and his death was marked by national mourning. His recordings, many of which are on the Gael-Linn label, are now considered national treasures. Mise Eire (Shanachie), is an atmospheric example of his work.