Inglaterra - Enciclopédia Online Britannica

06/03/2024, 09:55 Inglaterra - Enciclopédia Online Britannica
Inglaterra
Inglaterra , unidade
ÍNDICE
constituinte
predominante do Reino Introdução
Unido , ocupando mais Terra
da metade da ilha da
Pessoas
Grã-Bretanha .
Economia
Fora das Ilhas Governo e sociedade
Britânicas, a Inglaterra Vida cultural
é muitas vezes História

Inglaterra
erroneamente
considerada sinônimo
da ilha da Grã-Bretanha (Inglaterra, Escócia e País de
Gales ) e até mesmo de todo o Reino Unido. Apesar
do legado político, económico e cultural que garantiu
a perpetuação do seu nome, a Inglaterra já não existe
oficialmente como uma unidade governamental ou
política - ao contrário da Escócia, do País de Gales e
da Irlanda do Norte , que têm todos graus variados de
autogoverno no âmbito interno. romances. É raro que
Inglaterra
as instituições operem apenas para a Inglaterra.
Exceções notáveis são a Igreja da Inglaterra (País de Gales, Escócia e Irlanda, incluindo a
Irlanda do Norte, têm ramos separados da Comunhão Anglicana ) e associações esportivas
de críquete , rugby e futebol (futebol) . Em muitos aspectos, a Inglaterra parece ter sido
absorvida pela massa maior da Grã-Bretanha desde o Acto de União de 1707.
Cercada por grandes rios e pequenos riachos, a Inglaterra é uma terra fértil e a generosidade
do seu solo tem sustentado uma economia agrícola próspera durante milénios. No início do
século XIX, a Inglaterra tornou-se o epicentro de uma Revolução Industrial mundial e logo
o país mais industrializado do mundo. Extraindo recursos de todos os continentes
colonizados, cidades como Manchester , Birmingham e Liverpool converteram matérias-
primas em bens manufaturados para um mercado global, enquanto Londres , a capital do
país, emergiu como uma das cidades mais proeminentes do mundo e o centro de uma
economia política, econômica. e uma rede cultural que se estendia muito além das costas da
https://www.britannica.com/print/article/700965 1/40
Inglaterra. Hoje, a área metropolitana de Londres abrange grande parte do sudeste de

Inglaterra e continua a servir como centro financeiro da Europa e a ser um centro de
inovação – particularmente na cultura popular.
Uma das características fundamentais do inglês é a diversidade dentro de uma pequena

bússola. Nenhum lugar na Inglaterra fica a mais de 120 km do mar, e mesmo os pontos
mais distantes do país não ficam a mais de um dia de viagem rodoviária ou ferroviária de
Londres. Formada pela união de pequenos reinos celtas e anglo-saxões durante o início do
período medieval, a Inglaterra há muito compreende várias regiões distintas, cada uma
diferente em dialeto, economia, religião e disposição; na verdade, ainda hoje muitos
ingleses identificam-se pelas regiões ou condados de onde provêm – por exemplo,
Yorkshire, West Country, Midlands – e mantêm fortes laços com essas regiões, mesmo que
vivam noutros locais. No entanto, os pontos em comum são mais importantes do que estas
diferenças, muitas das quais começaram a desaparecer na era após a Segunda Guerra
Mundial , especialmente com a transformação da Inglaterra de uma sociedade rural numa
sociedade altamente urbanizada. A localização insular do país tem sido de importância
crítica para o desenvolvimento do carácter inglês, que promove as qualidades
aparentemente contraditórias de franqueza e reserva juntamente com conformidade e
excentricidade e que valoriza a harmonia social e, como acontece com muitos países
insulares, as boas maneiras que asseguram relações ordenadas numa paisagem densamente
povoada.
Com a perda do vasto império ultramarino da Grã-Bretanha em meados do século XX, a

Inglaterra sofreu uma crise de identidade, e muita energia foi dedicada às discussões sobre
o “inglesismo” – isto é, não apenas sobre o que significa ser inglês num país que tem agora
grandes populações de imigrantes de muitas antigas colónias e isso é muito mais
cosmopolita do que insular, mas também do que significa ser inglês em oposição a
britânico. Embora a cultura inglesa se baseie nas culturas do mundo, é bastante diferente de
qualquer outra, embora seja difícil de identificar e definir. Disso, o romancista inglêsGeorge
Orwell , o “patriota revolucionário” que narrou a política e a sociedade nas décadas de 1930
e 1940, observou emO Leão e o Unicórnio (1941):
Há algo distinto e reconhecível na civilização inglesa.… Ela está de alguma forma ligada a cafés
da manhã sólidos e domingos sombrios, cidades enfumaçadas e estradas sinuosas, campos
verdes e marcos vermelhos. Tem um sabor próprio. Além disso, é contínuo, estende-se ao futuro
e ao passado, há algo nele que persiste, como numa criatura viva.
Para muitos, Orwell capturou, tão bem quanto qualquer pessoa, a essência do que
Shakespeare chamou de “esta trama abençoada, esta terra, este reino, esta Inglaterra”.
Terra
A Inglaterra é limitada ao norte pela Escócia ; a oeste pelo mar da Irlanda , País de Gales , e
oceano Atlântico; ao sul pelo Canal da Mancha ; e a leste pelo Mar do Norte .
Alívio
A topografia da Inglaterra é baixa em altitude, mas,
exceto no leste, raramente é plana. Grande parte dela
consiste em encostas onduladas, com as elevações
mais altas encontradas no norte, noroeste e sudoeste.
Esta paisagem é baseada em estruturas subjacentes
complexas que formam padrões intrincados no mapa
geológico da Inglaterra. As rochas sedimentares mais
antigas e algumas rochas ígneas (em colinas isoladas
de granito) estão na Cornualha e Devon , no sudoeste
Inglaterra da península, antigas rochas vulcânicas estão
subjacentes a partes das montanhas da Cúmbria, e os
solos aluviais mais recentes cobrem os Pântanos de Cambridgeshire , Lincolnshire e
Norfolk . Entre estas regiões encontram-se faixas de arenitos e calcários de diferentes
períodos geológicos, muitos deles relíquias de tempos primitivos, quando grandes partes do
centro e do sul da Inglaterra estavam submersas em mares quentes. As forças geológicas
levantaram e dobraram algumas dessas rochas para formar a espinha dorsal do norte da
Inglaterra - os Peninos , que chegam a 2.930 pés (893 metros) em Cross Fell. OAs
montanhas da Cúmbria, que incluem o famoso Lake District , atingem 3.210 pés (978
metros) em Scafell Pike, o ponto mais alto da Inglaterra. A ardósia cobre a maior parte da
porção norte das montanhas, e espessas camadas de lava são encontradas na parte sul.
Outras camadas sedimentares produziram cadeias de colinas que variam de 965 pés (294
metros) em North Downs a 1.083 pés (330 metros) em Cotswolds .
As colinas conhecidas como Chilterns , North York Moors e Yorkshire e Lincolnshire

Wolds foram arredondadas em planaltos característicos com escarpas voltadas para oeste
durante três períodos glaciais sucessivos da Época Pleistoceno (cerca de 2.600.000 a 11.700
anos atrás). Quando a última camada de gelo derreteu, o nível do mar subiu, submergindo a
ponte de terra que ligava a Grã-Bretanha ao continente europeu. Depósitos profundos de
areia, cascalho e lama glacial deixados pelo recuo das geleiras alteraram ainda mais a
paisagem. A erosão causada pela chuva, pelos rios, pelas marés e pela subsidência em
partes do leste da Inglaterra posteriormente moldou as colinas e o litoral. Planaltos de
estratos calcários, arenosos e carboníferos estão associados a grandes jazidas de carvão,
algumas existindo como afloramentos na superfície.
A complexidade geológica da Inglaterra é ilustrada de forma impressionante na estrutura do

penhasco da sua costa. Ao longo da costa sul, desde as antigas falésias graníticas de Land's
End, no extremo sudoeste, há uma sucessão de arenitos de diferentes cores e calcários de
diferentes idades, culminando no giz branco da Ilha de Wight até Dover . Um panorama
variado de falésias, baías e estuários de rios distingue a costa inglesa, que, com as suas
muitas reentrâncias, tem cerca de 3.200 km de extensão.
Drenagem
OPeninos, oCotswolds e as charnecas e planícies calcárias do sul da Inglaterra servem
como bacias hidrográficas para a maioria dos rios da Inglaterra. O Éden , o Ribble e o
Mersey nascem nos Peninos, fluem para o oeste e têm um curso curto até o Oceano
Atlântico . Os Tyne , Tees , Swale , Aire , Don e Trent nascem nos Peninos, fluem para o
leste e têm um longo curso até o Mar do Norte . O Welland , o Nen e o Great Ouse nascem
na extremidade nordeste de Cotswolds e deságuam no estuário de Wash, que faz parte do
Mar do Norte. O vale do rio Welland faz parte das ricas terras agrícolas de Lincolnshire. O
Tâmisa , o maior rio da Inglaterra, também nasce em Cotswolds e drena grande parte do
sudeste da Inglaterra. Dos pântanos e planícies calcárias do sul da Inglaterra erguem-se
Tamar , Exe , Stour , Avon , Test, Arun e Ouse. Todos deságuam no Canal da Mancha e, em
alguns casos, ajudam a formar uma paisagem agradável ao longo da costa. O maior lago da
Inglaterra éWindermere , com área de 6 milhas quadradas (16 km quadrados), localizada no
condado de Cumbria .
Solos
In journeys of only a few miles it is possible to pass through a succession of different soil
structures—such as from chalk down to alluvial river valley, from limestone to sandstone
and acid heath, and from clay to sand—each type of soil bearing its own class of
vegetation. The Cumbrian Mountains and most of the southwestern peninsula have acid
brown soils. The eastern section of the Pennines has soils ranging from brown earths to
podzols. Leached brown soils predominate in much of southern England. Acid soils and
podzols occur in the southeast. Regional characteristics, however, are important. Black soil
covers the Fens in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk; clay soil predominates in the hills of the
Weald (in East Sussex and West Sussex); and the chalk downs, especially the North Downs
of Kent, are covered by a variety of stiff, brown clay, with sharp angular flints. Fine-grained
deposits of alluvium occur in the floodplains, and fine marine silt occurs around the Wash
estuary.
Climate
Weather in England is as variable as the topography. As in other temperate maritime zones,
the averages are moderate, ranging in the Thames river valley from about 35 °F (2 °C) in
January to 72 °F (22 °C) in July; but the extremes in England range from below 0 °F (−18
°C) to above 90 °F (32 °C). The Roman historian Tacitus recorded that the climate was
“objectionable, with frequent rains and mists, but no extreme cold.” Yet snow covers the
higher elevations of England about 50 days per year. England is known as a wet country,
and this is certainly true in the northwest and southwest. However, the northeastern and
central regions receive less than 30 inches (750 mm) of rainfall annually and frequently
suffer from drought. In parts of the southeast the annual rainfall averages only 20 inches
(500 mm). Charles II thought that the English climate was the best in the world—“a man
can enjoy outdoor exercise in all but five days of the year.” But no one would dispute that it
is unpredictable: hence Dr. Samuel Johnson’s observation that “when two Englishmen meet
their first talk is of the weather.” This changeability of the weather, not only season by
season but day by day and even hour by hour, has had a profound effect on English art and
literature. Not for nothing has the bumbershoot been the stereotypical walking stick of the
English gentleman.
Plant and animal life

England shares with the rest of Britain a diminished spectrum of vegetation and living
creatures, partly because the island was separated from the mainland of Europe soon after
much of it had been swept bare by the last glacial period and partly because the land has
been so industriously worked by humans. For example, a drastic depletion of mature broad-
leaved forests, especially oak, was a result of the overuse of timber in the iron and
shipbuilding industries. Today only a small part of the English countryside is woodland.
Broad-leaved (oak, beech, ash, birch, and elm) and conifer (pine, fir, spruce, and larch)
trees dominate the landscapes of Kent, Surrey, East Sussex, West Sussex, Suffolk, and
Hampshire. Important forests include Ashdown in East Sussex, Epping and Hatfield in
Essex, Dean in Gloucestershire, Sherwood in Nottinghamshire, Grizedale in Cumbria, and
Redesdale, Kielder, and Wark in Northumberland. A substantial amount of England’s
forestland is privately owned. Vegetation patterns have been further modified through
overgrazing, forest clearance, reclamation and drainage of marshlands, and the introduction
of exotic plant species. Though there are fewer species of plants than in the European
mainland, they nevertheless span a wide range and include some rarities. Certain
Mediterranean species exist in the sheltered and almost subtropical valleys of the
southwest, while tundra-like vegetation is found in parts of the moorland of the northeast.
England has a profusion of summer wildflowers in its fields, lanes, and hedgerows, though
in some areas these have been severely reduced by the use of herbicides on farms and
roadside verges. Cultivated gardens, which contain many species of trees, shrubs, and
flowering plants from around the world, account for much of the varied vegetation of the
country.
Mammal species such as the bear, wolf, and beaver were exterminated in historic times, but
others such as the fallow deer, rabbit, and rat have been introduced. More recently birds of
prey have suffered at the hands of farmers protecting their stock and their game birds.
Protective measures have been implemented, including a law restricting the collecting of
birds’ eggs, and some of the less common birds have been reestablishing themselves. The
bird life is unusually varied, mainly because England lies along the route of bird
migrations. Some birds have found town gardens, where they are often fed, to be a
favourable environment, and in London about 100 different species are recorded annually.
London also is a habitat conducive to foxes, which in small numbers have colonized woods
and heaths within a short distance of the city centre. There are few kinds of reptiles and
amphibians—about half a dozen species of each—but they are nearly all plentiful where
conditions suit them. Freshwater fish are numerous; the char and allied species of the lakes
of Cumbria probably represent an ancient group, related to the trout, that migrated to the
sea before the tectonic changes that formed these lakes cut off their outlet. The marine
fishes are abundant in species and in absolute numbers. The great diversity of shorelines
produces habitats for numerous types of invertebrate animals.
People
Ethnic groups and languages
The English language is polyglot, drawn from a variety of sources, and its vocabulary has
been augmented by importations from throughout the world. The English language does not
identify the English, for it is the main language of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, many
Commonwealth countries, and the United States. The primary source of the language,
however, is the main ethnic stem of the English: the Anglo-Saxons, who invaded and
colonized England in the 5th and 6th centuries. Their language provides the most
commonly used words in the modern English vocabulary.
In the millennia following the last glacial period, the British Isles were peopled by migrant
tribes from the continent of Europe and, later, by traders from the Mediterranean area.
During the Roman occupation England was inhabited by Celtic-speaking Brythons (or
Britons), but the Brythons yielded to the invading Teutonic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (from
present northwestern Germany) except in the mountainous areas of western and northern
Great Britain. The Anglo-Saxons preserved and absorbed little of the Roman-British culture
they found in the 5th century. There are few traces of Celtic or Roman Latin in the early
English of the Anglo-Saxons, though some words survive in place-names, such as the Latin
castra, for “camp,” providing the suffix -cester, and combe and tor, Celtic words for
“valley” and “hill.” Old Norse, the language of the Danes and Norsemen, left more
extensive traces, partly because it had closer affinities to Anglo-Saxon and because the
Danish occupation of large tracts of eastern and northern England was for a time deeply
rooted, as some place-names show.
The history of England before the Norman Conquest is poorly documented, but what stands
out is the tenacity of the Anglo-Saxons in surviving a succession of invasions. They united
most of what is now England from the 9th to the mid-11th century, only to be overthrown
by the Normans in 1066. For two centuries Norman French became the language of the
court and the ruling nobility; yet English prevailed and by 1362 had reestablished itself as
an official language. Church Latin, as well as a residue of Norman French, was
incorporated into the language during this period. It was subsequently enriched by the Latin
and Greek of the educated scholars of the Renaissance. The seafarers, explorers, and empire
builders of modern history have imported foreign words, most copiously from Europe but
also from Asia. These words have been so completely absorbed into the language that they
pass unselfconsciously as English. The English, it might be said, are great Anglicizers.
The English have also absorbed and Anglicized non-English peoples, from Scandinavian
pillagers and Norman conquerors to Latin church leaders. Among royalty, a Welsh dynasty
of monarchs, the Tudors, was succeeded by the Scottish Stuarts, to be followed by the
Dutch William of Orange and the German Hanoverians. English became the main language
for the Scots, Welsh, and Irish. England provided a haven for refugees from the time of the
Huguenots in the 17th century to the totalitarian persecutions of the 20th century. Many
Jews have settled in England. Since World War II there has been large-scale immigration
from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, posing seemingly more difficult problems of
assimilation, and restrictive immigration regulations have been imposed that are out of step
with the open-door policy that had been an English tradition for many generations.
Religion
Although the Church of England is formally
established as the official church, with the monarch at
its head, England is a highly secularized country. The
Church of England has some 13,000 parishes and a
similar number of clergy, but it solemnizes fewer than
Cathedral of Saint Mary one-third of marriages and baptizes only one in four
Cathedral of Saint Mary, Chelmsford, babies. The Nonconformist (non-Anglican Protestant)
England.
churches have nominally fewer members, but there is
probably greater dedication among them, as with the
Roman Catholic church. There is virtually complete religious tolerance in England and no
longer any overt prejudice against Catholics. The decline in churchgoing has been thought
to be an indicator of decline in religious belief, but opinion polls substantiate the view that
belief in God and the central tenets of Christianity survives the flagging fortunes of the
churches. Some churches—most notably those associated with the Evangelical movement
—have small but growing memberships. There are also large communities of Muslims,
Jews, Sikhs, and Hindus.
Settlement patterns
The modern landscape of England has been so significantly changed by humans that there
is virtually no genuine wilderness left. Only the remotest moorland and mountaintops have
been untouched. Even the bleak Pennine moors of the north are crisscrossed by dry stone
walls, and their vegetation is modified by the cropping of mountain sheep. The marks of
centuries of exploitation and use dominate the contemporary landscape. The oldest traces
are the antiquarian survivals, such as the Bronze Age forts studding the chalk downs of the
southwest, and the corrugations left by the strip farming of medieval open fields.
More significant is the structure of towns and villages,

which was established in Roman-British and Anglo-
Saxon times and has persisted as the basic pattern.
The English live in scattered high-density groupings,
whether in villages or towns or, in modern times,
cities. Although the latter sprawled into conurbations
Hambleden, Buckinghamshire, during the 19th and early 20th centuries without
England
careful planning, the government has since limited the
Village of Hambleden,
Buckinghamshire, England.
encroachment of urban development, and England
retains extensive tracts of farming countryside
between its towns, its smaller villages often engulfed in the vegetation of trees, copses,
hedgerows, and fields: in a phrase of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, “the sweet especial
rural scene,” which is so prominent in English literature and English art.
The visual impact of a mostly green and pleasant land can be seriously misleading. England
is primarily an industrial country, built up during the Industrial Revolution by exploitation
of the coalfields and cheap labour, especially in the cotton-textile areas of Lancashire, the
woolen-textile areas of Yorkshire, and the coal-mining, metalworking, and engineering
centres of the Midlands and the North East. England has large tracts of derelict areas,
scarred by the spoil heaps of the coal mines, quarries and clay pits, abandoned industrial
plants, and rundown slums.
One of the earliest initiatives to maintain the heritage of the past was the establishment in
1895 of the National Trust, a private organization dedicated to the preservation of historic
places and natural beauty in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. (There is a separate
National Trust for Scotland.) In 1957 the Civic Trust was established to promote interest in
and action on issues of the urban environment. Hundreds of local societies dedicated to the
protection of the urban environment have been set up, and many other voluntary
organizations as well as government agencies are working to protect and improve the
English landscape. Greenbelts have been mapped out for London and other conurbations.
The quality of town life has been improved by smoke control and checks on river pollution,
so effectively that the recorded sunshine in London and other major urban centres has
greatly increased and the “pea soup” fogs that once characterized London have become
memories of the past. Fish have returned to rivers—such as the Thames, Tyne, and Tees—
from which they had been driven by industrial pollution.
Traditional regions
Although England is a small and homogeneous country bound together by law,
administration, and a comprehensive transport system, distinctive regional differences have
arisen from the country’s geography and history. It was natural for different groups of the
population to establish themselves in recognizable physical areas. In the north, for example,
the east and west are separated by the Pennines, and the estuaries of the Humber, Thames,
and Severn rivers form natural barriers. The eight traditional geographic regions—the
South West, the South East (Greater London often was separated out as its own region), the
West Midlands, the East Midlands, East Anglia, the North West, Yorkshire, and the North
East—often were referred to as the standard regions of England, though they never served
administrative functions. In the 1990s the government redrew and renamed some regions
and established government development agencies for each.
The South West

The South West contains the last Celtic stronghold in
England, Cornwall, where a Celtic language was
spoken until the 18th century. There is even a small
nationalist movement, Mebyon Kernow (Sons of
Cornwall), seeking to revive the old language.
Stonehenge Although it has no political significance, the
Sarsen horseshoe of Stonehenge III, movement reflects the disenchantment of a declining
Wiltshire, England.
area, with the exhaustion of mineral deposits toward
the end of the 19th century. Cornwall and the
neighbouring county of Devon share a splendid coastline, and Dartmoor and Exmoor
national parks are in this part of the region. Farther east are the city of Bristol and the
counties of Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset, and Wiltshire. The last is famous for the
prehistoric stone circles at Stonehenge and Avebury and for associated remains dubbed
“woodhenges.” Development in the manufacturing sector in the 1970s and ’80s and the
growth of service activities and tourism in the 1990s contributed to the region’s significant
population increase.
The South East

The South East, centred on London, has a population and wealth to match many nation-
states. This is the dominant area of England and the most rapidly growing one, although
planning controls such as greenbelts have restricted the urban sprawl of London since the
mid-20th century. While fully one-third of the South East is still devoted to farming or
horticulture, the region as a whole also has an extensive range of manufacturing industry.
With improvements in the transportation systems, however, nuclear and space research
facilities, retailing, advertising, high-technology industries, and some services have moved
to areas outside London, including Surrey, Buckinghamshire, and Hertfordshire.
With its theatres, concert halls, museums, and art galleries, London is the cultural capital of
the country. It is the administrative headquarters of not only government but also many of
Britain’s industrial, financial, and commercial undertakings. Moreover, it is the focus of the
national transport system, acting as a hub for the United Kingdom’s international and
domestic air traffic and its mainline railway network. At Tilbury, 26 miles (42 km)
downstream from London proper, the Port of London Authority oversees the largest and
commercially most important port facilities in Britain. Whether the people of the South
East feel a regional identity is questionable. Sussex and Bedfordshire or Oxfordshire,
Hampshire, and Kent have nothing much in common apart from being within the magnetic
pull of London. Loyalties are more specifically to towns, such as St. Albans or Brighton,
and within London there is a sense of belonging more to localities—such as Chelsea or
Hampstead, which acquire something of the character of urban villages—than to the
metropolis as a whole.
The West Midlands

Regional characteristics are stronger outside the South
East. The West Midlands region, comprising the
historic counties of Herefordshire, Worcestershire,
Shropshire, Staffordshire, and Warwickshire, has
given its name to the metropolitan county of West
Royal Shakespeare Theatre Midlands, which includes the cities of Birmingham
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, and Coventry and the Black Country (an urban area
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire,
whose name reflects the coating of grime and soot
England.
afflicting the buildings of the region). With a history
dating to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, the West Midland towns gained a
reputation for being ugly but prosperous. However, the decline of heavy industry during the
late 20th century took its toll on employment and prosperity in the region. Not exclusively
an industrial area, the West Midlands includes Shakespeare country around Stratford-upon-
Avon, the fruit orchards of the Vale of Evesham, and the hill country on the Welsh border.
The East Midlands

The East Midlands are less coherent as a region, taking in the manufacturing centres of
Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham, and Derby. In broad swathes between the industrial
centres lies much of England’s best farmland. Several canals in the region, including the
Grand Junction and the Trent and Mersey, were used for commerce primarily from the late
18th to the early 20th century. They are now being revived, mainly for recreational use.
East Anglia
East Anglia retains an air of remoteness that belongs to its history. With the North Sea on its
northern and eastern flanks, it was at one time almost cut off by fenland to the west (now
drained) and forests (cleared long ago) to the south. In medieval times it was one of the
richest wool regions and, in some parts, was depopulated to make way for sheep. It is now
the centre of some of the most mechanized farming in England. Compared with other
regions, East Anglia has a low population density; with rapid industrialization in cities such
as Norwich and Bacton, however, this pattern is changing. Cambridge is home to one of the
world’s foremost universities; Newmarket, in Suffolk, is a world-famous centre for horse
racing.
The North West

Regions become more distinctive the farther they are
from London. The North West, chronically wet and
murky, comprises the geographic counties of
Cumbria, Lancashire, and Cheshire and the
metropolitan counties of Greater Manchester and
Esthwaite Water in the Lake Merseyside (including Liverpool). This region’s
District, England
declining cotton-textile industry is rapidly being
Mountain-encircled Esthwaite Water in replaced by diversified manufacturing. The North
the Lake District of northwestern
England. West expresses itself in an accent of its own, with a
tradition of variety-hall humour (from the classic
work of George Formby and Gracie Fields to the more recent efforts of Alexie Sayle); it has
also earned global renown for giving birth to British rock music, with the Beatles and other
groups in Liverpool, and for football (soccer), notably with the Liverpool FC and
Manchester United football clubs. However, these advantages could not hide Liverpool’s
economic decline in the late 20th century. Much of the city’s prosperity was built on its
port, which served transatlantic and imperial trade, but, as trade switched increasingly to
Europe, Liverpool found itself on the wrong side of the country and increasingly lost
business to ports in the south and east. Overall, the North West is still breaking into the new
territories of modern industry, its old cotton towns symbolically overshadowed by the grim
gritrock Pennine escarpments that have been stripped of their trees by two centuries of
industrial smoke. Nonetheless, Manchester remains an important financial and commercial
centre. Several canals traverse the region, including the Manchester Ship Canal and the
Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The Lake District in the Cumbrian Mountains, the Solway
coast, the northern Pennines, Hadrian’s Wall, and part of Yorkshire Dales National Park
contribute to the scenic landscape of Cumbria.
Yorkshire
On the east side of the Pennines watershed, the metropolitan county of West Yorkshire,
including the cities of Leeds and Bradford, has a character similar to that of the industrial
North West. Its prosperity formerly was based on coal and textile manufacture, and, though
manufacturing remains important, West Yorkshire has diversified its economy. Indeed,
Leeds has become England’s most important financial centre outside London. This region
also shows a rugged independence of character expressed in a tough style of humour.
Farther south, steel is concentrated at Sheffield, world-famous for its cutlery and silver
plate (known as Sheffield plate). Sheffield is the cultural and service centre of the industrial
metropolitan county of South Yorkshire. The region also has extensive areas of farming in
North Yorkshire and East Riding of Yorkshire, a deep-sea fishing industry operating from
Hull, and tourist country along a fine coast in the east (North York Moors National Park)
and in the beautiful valleys of the west (Yorkshire Dales National Park).
The North East

The North East extends to the Scottish border, taking in the geographic counties of
Northumberland and Durham. It also includes the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear
and the Teesside metropolitan area (centred on Middlesbrough) and is therefore unusually
diverse. Teesside was heavily industrialized (iron and steel and shipbuilding) during the
19th century, but it has more recently become an important tourist destination along the
North Sea at the edge of North York Moors National Park. Teesside also has one of the
largest petrochemical complexes in Europe, and oil from the Ekofisk field in the North Sea
is piped ashore there. Coal mining was formerly the biggest industry in the county of
Durham, but the last mine closed by the end of the 20th century, and the emphasis is now
on engineering, the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, and service industries. The local
flavour of life can be found in the dialect known as Geordie and in the folk songs of Tyne
and Wear and the former coal-mining villages. The city of Newcastle upon Tyne is an
important industrial and commercial centre. The region also contains some of the most
desolate land in England, in the Cheviot Hills along the Scottish border.
Demographic trends
England comprises more than four-fifths of the total population of the United Kingdom.
Although during the 1970s and ’80s the overall birth rate remained constant, the number of
births per thousand women between the ages of 20 and 24 fell by two-fifths, the drop
reflecting a trend among women to delay both marriage and childbirth. The overall death
rate remained constant, but the mortality rate among young children and young adults
decreased. Over the last half of the 20th century the number of people aged 65 and older
almost doubled. During that same period the populations of the larger metropolitan areas,
especially Greater London and Merseyside, decreased somewhat as people moved to distant
outlying suburbs and rural areas. The standard regions of East Anglia, the East Midlands,
the South West, and the South East (excluding Greater London) gained population, while
the other standard regions all lost population. However, in the late 1990s the population of
London started to climb once more, especially in the former port areas (the Docklands),
where economic regeneration led to the creation of new jobs and homes.
Economy
The economy of England was mainly agricultural until the 18th century, but the Industrial
Revolution caused it to evolve gradually into a highly urbanized and industrial region
during the 18th and 19th centuries. Heavy industries (iron and steel, textiles, and
shipbuilding) proliferated in the northeastern counties because of the proximity of coal and
iron ore deposits. During the 1930s the Great Depression and foreign competition
contributed to a decrease in the production of manufactured goods and an increase in
unemployment in the industrial north. The unemployed from these northern counties moved
south to London and the surrounding counties. The southeast became urbanized and
industrialized, with automotive, chemical, electrical, and machine tool manufactures as the
leading industries. An increase in population and urban growth during the 20th century
caused a significant drop in the acreage of farms in England, but the geographic counties of
Cornwall, Devon, Kent, Lincolnshire, Somerset, and North Yorkshire have remained
largely agricultural.
Another period of industrial decline during the late 20th century brought the virtual
collapse of coal mining and dramatic job losses in iron and steel production, shipbuilding,
and textile manufacturing. The decline of these industries particularly hurt the economies of
the north and Midlands, while the south remained relatively prosperous. By the beginning
of the 21st century, England’s economy was firmly dominated by the service sector, notably
banking and other financial services, retail, distribution, media and entertainment,
education, health care, hotels, and restaurants.
Agriculture, forestry, and fishing

The physical environment and natural resources of England are more favourable to
agricultural development than those of other parts of the United Kingdom. A greater
proportion of the land consists of lowlands with good soils where the climate is conducive
to grass or crop growing. The majority of English farms are small, most holdings being less
than 250 acres (100 hectares). Nonetheless, they are highly mechanized.
Major crops
Wheat, the chief grain crop, is grown in the drier, sunnier counties of eastern and southern
England. Barley is grown mainly for livestock feed and for malting and other industrial
markets. Corn, rye, oats, and rapeseed (the source of canola oil) are also grown. Principal
potato-growing areas are the fenlands of Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and Lincolnshire; the
clay soils of Lincolnshire and East Riding of Yorkshire; and the peats of North Yorkshire.
Sugar beet production depends heavily on government subsidy because of competition
from imported cane sugar. Legumes and grasses such as alfalfa and clover are grown for
feeding livestock.
The production of vegetables, fruits, and flowers, known in England as market gardening,
is often done in greenhouses and is found within easy trucking distance of large towns, the
proximity of a market being of more consequence than climatic considerations. The fertile
(clay and limestone) soil of Kent has always been conducive to fruit growing; there
cultivation was first established on a commercial scale in the 16th century. Kent is a major
supplier of fruits and vegetables (apples, pears, black currants, cauliflowers, and cabbages).
Worcestershire is noted for its plums, and Somerset and Devon specialize in cider apples.
Livestock
The agriculture of England, though to a lesser extent than in Wales and Scotland, is
primarily concerned with livestock husbandry and, in particular, with milk production.
Dairying is important in every county, though the main concentrations are in western
England. The English have a strong tradition of cattle breeding, which benefited greatly
from improved practices after World War II. Higher-yielding dairy breeds, including the
Frisian and Ayrshire, have become more numerous than the once-dominant Shorthorn.
Domestic production supplies most of the country’s beef needs. Special beef breeds, for
which Britain is famous, are raised throughout the country, but long-established specialist
areas retain their importance. Cattle are often moved from one region to another for raising,
storing, and final fattening. The beef industry suffered costly setbacks in the late 1990s
because of concerns over an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (“mad cow
disease”).
The foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in 2001 had a dire effect on the livestock industry,
forcing the slaughter of several million animals—mostly sheep but also cattle, pigs, and
other animals—and causing severe losses for agriculture. Although cases occurred in all
parts of the country, the outbreak was particularly disastrous for Cumbria, where more than
two-fifths of the cases occurred.
Hill sheep are bred in the Pennines, the Lake District, and the southwestern peninsula, areas
where sheep are occasionally the main source of a farmer’s income but frequently of
subsidiary importance to cattle. The production of lambs for meat rather than wool is the
main concern of English sheep farmers. Grass-fed breeds, yielding lean meat, are much
more important than the large breeds, raised on arable land, that were characteristic of the
19th century.
While specialist pig farms are rare, they do exist, supplying the large sausage and bacon
companies. Poultry are kept in small numbers on most farms, but specialist poultry farms,
notably in Lancashire and in the southeastern counties serving the London market, have
increased.
Forestry
Many forests in England are managed by the Forest Commission, which, besides promoting
timber production, also emphasizes wildlife preservation. During the 18th and 19th
centuries timber was heavily used by the iron-and-steel and shipbuilding industries.
Presently demand for timber continues in construction and furniture industries, but, with the
government’s afforestation program in effect, new coniferous forests are beginning to dot
the landscape.
Fishing
Freshwater fish, including bream, carp, perch, pike, and roach, are available in the rivers of
eastern England. Cod, haddock, whiting, herring, plaice, halibut, turbot, and sole are caught
in the North and Irish seas. Several ports, including Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth, Grimsby,
Bridlington, and Fleetwood, have freezing and processing plants nearby. Oyster farms are
located along the creeks and estuaries in Essex, and rainbow trout farming has become
popular. Salmon fishing is prohibited in waters more than 6 miles (10 km) from the coasts
of England.
Resources and power

For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, coal was England’s richest natural resource,
meeting most of the nation’s requirement for energy. However, international competition,
rising domestic costs, the growth of cheaper domestic alternatives (such as natural gas), and
mounting environmental concerns combined to cripple the coal industry in the 1980s and
’90s. Coal production is now only one-fifth of its mid-20th-century level. New technologies
and the discovery of huge reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the North Sea have
further transformed the pattern of energy production. Natural gas supplies the largest
proportion of England’s energy needs, followed by oil, coal, and nuclear power.
Manufacturing
Sand, gravel, and crushed rock are widely available and provide raw materials for the
construction industry. Clay and salt are found in northwestern England, and kaolin (china
clay) is available in Cornwall.
About one-fifth of England’s workers are employed in manufacturing. Major industries

located in the northern counties include food processing, brewing, and the manufacture of
chemicals, textiles, computers, automobiles, aircraft, clothing, glass, and paper and paper
products. Leading industries in southeastern England are pharmaceuticals, computers,
microelectronics, aircraft parts, and automobiles.
Finance
Financial services are central to England’s economy, especially in London and the South
East. A major world centre for finance, banking, and insurance, London—especially the
City of London—hosts such centuries-old bodies as the Bank of England (1694), Lloyd’s
(1688), and the London Stock Exchange (1773), as well as more recent arrivals. Although
London dominates the sector, financial services are also important in other cities, such as
Leeds, Liverpool, and Manchester.
Services
Service activities account for more than two-thirds of employment in England, largely
because of the primacy of London and the importance of the financial services sector. As
the national capital and a prominent cultural mecca, London also provides a vast number of
jobs in government and education, as well as at its many cultural institutions. The cities of
Cambridge, Ipswich, and Norwich are important service and high-technology centres, as is
the “M4 corridor”—a series of towns, such as Reading and Swindon, near the M4
motorway between London and South Wales. Retailing is strong throughout the country,
from ubiquitous local supermarkets to the exclusive boutiques of Mayfair in London’s West
End.
Tourism also plays a significant role in England’s economy. The country’s attractions
appeal to a wide variety of interests, ranging from its rich architecture, archaeology, arts,
and culture to its horticulture and scenic landscape. A large number of England’s domestic
vacationers opt for seaside spots such as Blackpool, Bournemouth, and Great Yarmouth.
The southwestern counties, with their extensive coastline and national parks, also attract a
large number of tourists. However, the seasonal and low-paid nature of many service and
tourist-related jobs has kept the average income lower in the southwest than in most other
parts of England. Millions of British and international tourists annually visit London
attractions such as the British Museum, the National Gallery, Westminster Abbey, Saint
Paul’s Cathedral, and the Tower of London; still others travel beyond the capital to take in
Canterbury Cathedral and York Minster.
Transportation
England is well served by roads, railways, ports, and airports. During the 1980s and ’90s
Britain’s trade with Europe increased sharply, and the ports in southern and southeastern
England now handle significantly higher traffic than the ports of Liverpool and Manchester.
Leading ports for container traffic are Felixstowe, Tilbury, Thamesport (Medway),
Liverpool, and Southampton. Dover, Grimsby, and Harwich chiefly handle roll-on traffic.
Major airports in and around London are Heathrow, Gatwick, and Stansted, which together
serve more than 40 million passengers annually. Airports at Birmingham, Manchester,
Newcastle upon Tyne, and Luton also handle significant amounts of traffic. The feasibility
of a tunnel under the English Channel between England and France was first explored in
the late 19th century. After lengthy debate and numerous delays, the Channel Tunnel rail
link opened in 1994 between Folkestone in Kent and the French town of Sangatte near
Calais.
Highways radiate from London in all directions, and the increase in traffic is visible in the
congested highways. London, other large cities, and towns are linked by an efficient
network of trains. Several high-speed freight trains serve the major industrial centres.
London’s Underground train system, the “Tube,” covers some 250 route miles (400 km).
Inland waterways were developed during the 17th and 18th centuries, mainly to carry bulky
raw materials such as coal, iron ore, and limestone between the industrial centres of
Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Kingston upon Hull, Birmingham, and London. By the end
of the 18th century, a “cross” system of canals connected the Thames, Humber, Mersey, and
Severn estuaries. Most canals are now in disuse.
For further discussion of the economy of England, see the economy sections of the article
United Kingdom.
Government and society
Constitutional framework
England itself does not have a formal government or
constitution, and a specifically English role in
contemporary government and politics is hard to
identify in any formal sense, for these operate on a
nationwide British basis. Historically, the English may
be credited with the evolution of Parliament, which, in
its medieval form, was related to the Anglo-Saxon
practice of regular gatherings of notables. The English
may also be credited with the glory of the Revolution
of 1688, which affirmed the rule of law, parliamentary
control of taxation and of the army, freedom of
speech, and religious toleration. Freedom of speech
and opinion with proper opportunities for reasonable
debate form part of the English tradition, but the
development of party and parliamentary government
in its modern forms took place after the Act of Union
United Kingdom of 1707, when, in politics, the history of England
became the history of Britain. Unlike Scotland, Wales,
and Northern Ireland, each of which has its own assembly or parliament, regional
government does not exist in England.
Local government
England has a distinct system of local government, which has evolved over the centuries.
The shires, or historic counties, that developed during Anglo-Saxon times persisted as
geographic, cultural, and administrative units for about a thousand years. In 1888 the Local
Government Act regularized the administrative functions of the counties and redrew some
of the boundaries of the historic counties to create new administrative counties, including
the county of London, formed from parts of the historic counties of Middlesex, Surrey, and
Kent.
Further local government reforms during the 1960s and ’70s brought new changes to the
boundaries of the administrative counties, many of which lost area to the seven new
metropolitan counties, including Greater London. Each of these counties comprised several
lower-level districts or boroughs. In 1986 Greater London and the metropolitan counties
lost their administrative powers, which passed to their constituent boroughs. During the
1990s another round of local government reorganization brought a further reduction in the
area of the administrative counties. Parts of many former administrative counties gained
administrative autonomy as unitary authorities—a new kind of administrative unit. Many,
but not all, of the new unitary authorities are urban areas. Thus, the combined effect of
20th-century local government reforms was to separate most of England’s major urban
areas from the traditional county structure. However, for ceremonial and statistical
purposes, the government created a new entity during the 1990s—the ceremonial, or
geographic, county. Each geographic county either is coterminous with a metropolitan
county or encompasses one or more unitary authorities, often together with the
administrative county with which they are historically associated. Greater London regained
some of its administrative powers in 2000.
Local governments have few legislative powers and must act within the framework of laws
passed by Parliament. They do have the power to enact regulations and to levy property
taxes within limits set by the central government. In addition, they are responsible for a
range of community services, including environmental matters, education, highways and
traffic, social services, firefighting, sanitation, planning, housing, parks and recreation, and
elections.
England’s internal subdivisions and administrative units include distinct historic,

geographic, and administrative counties; districts; unitary authorities; metropolitan counties
and boroughs; and other specialized entities.
Historic counties
Every part of England lies within one of 39 historic counties, which lack any current
administrative function. Some current administrative counties carry the names of historic
counties, although their boundaries no longer correspond exactly. Despite their loss of
administrative function, historic counties continue to serve as a focus for local identity, and
cultural institutions such as sporting associations are often organized by historic county.
Geographic counties
For ceremonial purposes, every part of England belongs to one of 47 geographic, or
ceremonial, counties, which are distinct from the historic counties. The monarch appoints a
lord lieutenant and a high sheriff to represent each geographic county. Because every part
of England falls within one of these counties, they serve as statistical and geographic units.
Some geographic counties are coterminous with metropolitan counties (including Greater
London). For every administrative county, there is a geographic county of the same name
that includes the entire administrative county; however, some geographic counties are not
associated with administrative counties. Geographic counties may also include one or more
unitary authorities.
Administrative counties and districts

There are currently 27 administrative counties in England, and many of them carry the
same names as historic counties. However, unlike the latter, administrative counties do not
cover the entirety of English territory; moreover, their government structure is considered
two-tiered, as they are subdivided into lower-level units known as districts, boroughs, or
cities. Government at the county level is responsible for large-scale urban planning,
highways and traffic, firefighting, refuse disposal, education, libraries, social services, and
consumer protection. The second-tier units (districts, including those designated as
boroughs or cities) are responsible for local planning, public health, environmental matters,
refuse collection, recreation, and voter registration.
Unitary authorities
England currently contains 56 administrative units called unitary authorities, so named
because, unlike administrative counties, they are not subdivided into districts, boroughs, or
cities but instead constitute a single tier of local government. Unitary authorities are
responsible for all the administrative functions of both administrative counties and districts
within counties. Some cities in England are designated as unitary authorities.
Metropolitan counties and districts
There are 36 metropolitan districts, which are subdivisions of the six metropolitan counties
in England, not including Greater London. Each metropolitan county is divided into several
metropolitan districts, which are like unitary authorities in that they handle all local
government administrative functions. The metropolitan counties formerly had
administrative functions similar to the administrative counties, but those functions passed in
1986 to their constituent metropolitan boroughs. The metropolitan counties now survive
only as geographic and statistical units, and they also serve as ceremonial counties.
Greater London
Greater London is a unique administrative unit. Like other metropolitan counties, it lost
most of its administrative functions in 1986 to its constituent boroughs. However, because
of Greater London’s special status as national capital, the central government of the United
Kingdom assumed direct responsibility for other functions usually performed by local
governments. In 2000 the metropolitan area regained some of its administrative powers.
The new Greater London Authority, comprising a directly elected mayor and a 25-member
assembly, assumed some of the responsibilities in London previously handled by the central
government—notably transport, planning, police, and other emergency services.
Greater London consists of 32 boroughs and the City of London, which is a 1-square-mile
(2.6-square-km) area at the core of London whose boundaries have changed little since the
Middle Ages. It is now the site of London’s financial district. The City is one of the
constituent parts of Greater London, but it has rights and privileges that are distinct from
the 32 boroughs, including its own lord mayor, who is not to be confused with the mayor of
Greater London. The boroughs and the City of London retain separate responsibility for
local government functions other than large-scale planning, transport, and emergency
services.
Parishes and towns

Parish and town councils form the lowest tier of local government in England. Parishes are
civil subdivisions, usually centred on a village or small town, that are distinct from church
bodies. They have the power to assess “precepts” (surcharges) on local rates (property
taxes), and they possess a range of other rights and duties, including participation in
regional planning and maintenance of commons and recreational facilities.
Justice
The English have given the world, notably North America and much of the
Commonwealth, the system of English law that has acquired a status and universality to
match Roman law. English law has its origins in Anglo-Saxon times, and two of its
hallmarks are its preference for customary law (the common law) rather than statute law
and its system of application by locally appointed part-time magistrates, by locally chosen
juries, and by the traveling judges going from one county town (seat) to another on circuit.
The Anglo-Saxon system was retained under the Normans but formalized; for example,
beginning in the 13th century, case law was recorded to provide uniform precedents. In
modern times there has been a greater reliance on the statute law contained in the thousands
of acts of Parliament, but there are more than 300,000 recorded cases to turn to for
precedent. Other aspects of English law are the fundamental assumption that an accused
person is deemed innocent until proved guilty and the independence of the judiciary from
intervention by crown or government in the judicial process.
The legal system is divided into civil and criminal

courts. The House of Lords was the ultimate court of
appeal for both civil and criminal cases brought
through the High Court or the Court of Appeal until
2009, when that function was taken over by the newly
House of Lords established Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. In
Chamber of the House of Lords in the 1971 the Crown Court replaced the individual courts
Houses of Parliament, London.
(quarter sessions and assizes), and it is now a single
court that may sit anywhere in England, deal with any
trial on indictment, and hear appeals and proceedings either on a sentence or on civil
matters. At the base of the criminal court system, the magistrates’ courts hear all but a tiny
proportion of criminal cases.
Political process
All citizens at least 18 years of age are eligible to vote in elections, and elections in
England are contested at three levels: local, national, and supranational. Local councillors
are elected for four-year terms. All British citizens residing in England are eligible to vote
in local elections, as are residents from other countries of the European Union (EU).
England elects four-fifths (more than 500) of the members of the House of Commons, the
legislature of the United Kingdom. Each member represents a single geographic
constituency. Elections to the House of Commons are held at least once every five years,
and voting is restricted to British citizens. Voters also select members of the European
Parliament once every five years through a system of proportional representation; non-
British EU citizens residing in England are eligible to participate in such elections.
The Conservative and Labour parties have tended to dominate the political process, leading
most analysts to describe the country as having the archetypal two-party system. However,
since the 1970s, minor parties have played a more important role in English elections,
especially at the local level, and in the early 21st century the Liberal Democrats, the
principal minor party, began making big electoral gains, as did the Euroskeptic United
Kingdom Independence Party. There is a definite north-south split in party loyalties. The
Labour Party is strong in northern England and in urban areas throughout the country; the
Conservatives have dominated politics in much of the south (excluding London); and the
Liberal Democrats are particularly competitive in southwestern England, replacing Labour
as the main opposition to the Conservative Party in many local and national elections.
Health and welfare

Improvements in health care are reflected by the increase in longevity for people in
England. Life expectancy increased since 1960 from 68 years to about 75 for males and
from 74 years to nearly 80 for females by the early 21st century. Coronary heart disease and
cancer are the major causes of death among men aged 50 and older and also among women
aged 40 and older. Although certain infectious diseases such as poliomyelitis and
tuberculosis have virtually disappeared, the incidence of whooping cough and acute
meningococcal meningitis has increased among children in England.
The National Health Service, an organ of the central government, provides comprehensive
medical services for every resident of England. Doctors, dentists, opticians, and
pharmacists work within the service as independent contractors. Social services are
provided through local-authority social service departments. The services are directed
toward children and young people, low-income families, the unemployed, the disabled, the
mentally ill, and the elderly. Several religious organizations provide help and advice as
well. The National Insurance Scheme insures individuals against loss of income because of
unemployment, maternity, and long-term illnesses. It provides retirement pensions, widows’
and maternity benefits, child and guardian allowances, and benefits for job-related injuries
or death.
Housing
Because of the influx of immigrants from Commonwealth countries and from rural areas in
England, London and other cities throughout the country have sometimes experienced
severe housing shortages. Historically, a significant proportion of people lived in public
housing built by local governments. During the 1980s and ’90s home ownership throughout
the United Kingdom (and particularly in England) increased significantly, as the
government passed legislation encouraging public housing tenants to purchase their units.
Whereas in the 1950s about 30 percent of homes were owner-occupied, by the end of the
20th century the figure had risen to about 70 percent of houses in England. Although home
ownership increased substantially in all regions, it was lowest in London (about three-
fifths) and highest in the South East (about three-quarters). Still, about one-fifth of all
tenants live in public housing. During the 1990s the government allocated significant
resources to modernize public housing and reduce crime in housing estates. Homelessness
has been a particular problem, especially in London.
Education
In England the Department for Education is responsible for all levels of education.
Universities, however, are self-governing and depend on the central government only for
financial grants. Education is compulsory between the ages of 5 and 16. About one-third of
primary and secondary schools in England are administered by Anglican or Roman
Catholic voluntary organizations. More than four-fifths of the secondary-school population
(children aged 11 through 18) within the government’s school system attend state-funded
comprehensive schools, in which admission is not based on aptitude alone; the remainder
attend grammar schools (founded on the principle of teaching grammar [meaning Latin] to
boys), secondary modern schools (few of which remain), or one of the growing number of
specialist schools (such as City Technology Colleges). Tertiary colleges offer a full range of
vocational and academic courses to students aged 16 and older. A new type of state-funded
school, the academy, was introduced under Prime Minister Tony Blair and expanded under
the government led by David Cameron. Academies, which typically have taken the place of
underperforming schools, receive their funding directly from the central government and
are not subject to the direction and policies of the local authority. Free schools operate with
the same autonomy but are new start-up schools rather than replacement schools.
Independent schools also provide both primary and secondary education but charge tuition.
In large cities a large number of independent schools are run by ethnic and religious
communities.
The so-called public schools, which are actually private, are often categorized as
independent schools. They came to be known as “public schools” in the mid 19th century,
when they widened their intake from purely local scholars and provided residential
“boarding” places for pupils from farther afield. Although their fees were beyond the reach
of all but the richest families, these schools were in principle open to the public, and the
term has survived into the modern era. Most public schools continue to be residential, are
privately financed, and provide education to children aged 11 through 19. Important public
schools for boys include Eton (the oldest; established 1440–41), Harrow, Winchester, and
Westminster; notable public schools for girls include Cheltenham, Roedean, and Wycombe
Abbey.
At the completion of secondary education, students (in both privately and publicly funded
schools) receive the General Certificate of Secondary Education if they achieve the
required grades in examinations and course-work assessments.
More than half of England’s young adults receive some form of postsecondary education
through colleges and universities. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge date from the
12th and 13th centuries, and both have university presses that are among the oldest printing
and publishing houses in the world. There are scores of universities in England, some of
which are referred to as “red brick” universities. These were founded in the late 19th or
early 20th century in the industrial cities of Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham,
Sheffield, and Bristol and were constructed of red brick, as contrasted with the stone
construction of the buildings of Oxford and Cambridge. During the 1990s the number of
universities doubled, with locally run polytechnics being redesignated as full universities. A
continuing education program of the Open University (1969), in Milton Keynes,
Buckinghamshire, offers course work through correspondence and the electronic media.
Cultural life
England’s contribution to both British and world culture is too vast for anything but a
cursory survey here. Historically, England was a very homogeneous country and developed
coherent traditions, but, especially as the British Empire expanded and the country
absorbed peoples from throughout the globe, English culture has been accented with
diverse contributions from Afro-Caribbeans, Asians, Muslims, and other immigrant groups.
Other parts of the United Kingdom have experienced the same social and cultural
diversification, with the result that England is not always distinguishable from Wales and
Scotland or even Northern Ireland. The former insularity of English life has been replaced
by a cosmopolitan familiarity with all things exotic: fish and chips have given way to
Indian, Chinese, and Italian cuisine, guitar-based rock blends with South Asian rap and
Afro-Caribbean salsa, and the English language itself abounds in neologisms drawn from
nearly every one of the world’s tongues.
Even as England has become ever more diverse culturally, it continues to exert a strong
cultural influence on the rest of the world. English music, film, and literature enjoy wide
audiences overseas, and the English language has gained ever-increasing currency as the
preferred international medium of cultural and economic exchange.
Daily life and social customs

Historically, English daily life and customs were markedly different in urban and rural
areas. Indeed, much of English literature and popular culture has explored the tension
between town and country and between farm and factory. Today, even though the English
are among the world’s most cosmopolitan and well-traveled people, ties to the rural past
remain strong. Urbanites, for example, commonly retire to villages and country cottages,
and even the smallest urban dwelling is likely to have a garden.
Another divide, though one that is fast disappearing, is the rigid class system that long
made it difficult for nonaristocratic individuals to rise to positions of prominence in
commerce, government, and education. Significant changes have accompanied the decline
of the class system, which also had reinforced distinctions between town and country and
between the less affluent north of England and the country’s wealthy south. For example,
whereas in decades past English radio was renowned for its “proper” language, the
country’s airwaves now carry accents from every corner of the country and its former
empire, and the wealthy are likely to enjoy the same elements of popular culture as the less
advantaged.
Many holidays in England, such as Christmas, are celebrated throughout the world, though
the traditional English Christmas is less a commercial event than an opportunity for singing
and feasting. Remembrance Day (November 11) honours British soldiers who died in
World War I. Other remembrances are unique to England and are nearly inexplicable to
outsiders. For example, Guy Fawkes Night (November 5) commemorates a Roman
Catholic conspiracy to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605, and Saint George’s Day
(April 23) honours England’s patron saint—though the holiday is barely celebrated at all in
England, in marked contrast to the celebrations in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland for their
respective patron saints. Indeed, the lack of official celebration for Saint George contributes
to the ambiguity of “Englishness” and whether it can now be distinguished from
“Britishness.” The monarch’s official birthday is also observed nationally and

commemorated in the summer by a military parade called Trooping the Colour, which has
been celebrated since the 18th century.
English cuisine has traditionally been based on beef,

lamb, pork, chicken, and fish, all cooked with the
minimum of embellishment and generally served with
potatoes and one other vegetable—or, in the case of
fish (most commonly cod or haddock) deep-fried in
Fish and Chips batter and served with deep-fried potato slices (chips).
Fish and Chips served in newspaper Fish and chips, traditionally wrapped in old
in England.
newspapers to keep warm on the journey home, has
long been one of England’s most popular carryout
dishes. By convention, at least for middle-income households, the main family meal of the
week was the “Sunday joint,” when a substantial piece of beef, lamb, or pork was roasted in
the oven during the morning and served around midday. In the 1950s and ’60s, however,
these traditions started to change. Immigrants from India and Hong Kong arrived with their
own distinctive cuisine, and Indian and Chinese restaurants became a familiar sight in every
part of England. By the 1980s, American-style fast-food restaurants dotted the landscape,
and the rapid post-World War II growth of holiday travel to Europe, particularly to France,
Spain, Greece, and Italy, exposed the English to new foods, flavours, and ingredients, many
of which found their way into a new generation of recipe books that filled the shelves of the
typical English kitchen.
Other traditional English dishes include scones,

kippers, bangers and mash, pie and mash, bubble and
squeak, Blood pudding, the Scotch egg, Yorkshire
pudding, shepherd’s pie, steak and kidney
pie, the Chelsea bun, Welsh rarebit, the ploughman’s
Cornish clotted cream lunch, Cornish clotted cream, and sticky toffee
Plate of scones, berry jam, and pudding. Strawberries and cream and the Pimm’s Cup
Cornish clotted cream.
are the signature dish and drink, respectively, at
England’s annual Wimbledon tennis tournament.
The arts
Literature
In its literature, England arguably has attained its

most influential cultural expression. For more than a
millennium, each stage in the development of the
English language has produced its masterworks.
bangers and mash

Little is known of English literature before the arrival
of the Anglo-Saxons, though echoes of England’s
A plate of bangers and mash from
London, England. Celtic past resound in Arthurian legend. Anglo-Saxon
literature, written in the Old English language, is
remarkably diverse. Its surviving corpus includes
hymns, lyric poems such as “The Wanderer” and “The
Seafarer,” riddles and spells, songs, and the epic poem
Beowulf, which dates from the 9th or 10th century.
William Shakespeare Following the Norman Conquest of 1066, French
William Shakespeare, detail of an oil influence shaped the vocabulary as well as the literary
painting attributed to John Taylor, c. preoccupations of Middle English. Geoffrey Chaucer
1610. The portrait is called the
“Chandos Shakespeare” because it epitomized both the courtly philosophical concerns
once belonged to the duke of and the earthy vernacular of this period in his Troilus
Chandos.
and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales, respectively,
while William Langland’s Piers Plowman was an early expression of the religious and
political dissent that would later characterize English literature. The Elizabethan era of the
late 16th century fostered the flowering of the European Renaissance in England and the
golden age of English literature. The plays of William Shakespeare, while on their surface
representing the culmination of Elizabethan English, achieve a depth of characterization
and richness of invention that have fixed them in the dramatic repertoire of virtually every
language. The publication of the King James Version of the Bible in 1611 infused the
literature of the period with both religious imagery and a remarkably vigorous language,
and it served as an important instrument for the spread of literacy throughout England.
Political and religious conflicts of the 17th century provided a backdrop for a wealth of
poetry, ranging from the metaphysical introspections of John Donne to the visionary epics
of John Milton, in addition to the prose allegory Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan.
The dichotomy of Classicism and Romanticism as

well as of reason and imagination came to dominate
the 18th century, with the Neoclassical satire and
criticism of Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and
Samuel Johnson on the one hand and the somewhat
William Wordsworth later Romantic self-expression of William Blake,

William Wordsworth, engraving, 1833. William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and
John Keats on the other. Also during this period, the
novel emerged as a form capable of bringing everyday
life into the province of literature, as can be seen in
the work of Jane Austen. At roughly this point, the
distinctive regions of England began to exert a
Dickens, Charles powerful influence on many writers—such as the
Charles Dickens. Lake District on Wordsworth, the Yorkshire moors on
the Brontë sisters (Anne, Charlotte, and Emily), Dorset on Thomas Hardy, the Midlands
coalfields on D.H. Lawrence, and London on Charles Dickens. In the mid to late 19th
century, English literature increasingly addressed social concerns, yielding the utopian
writings of William Morris and Samuel Butler, the psychological analysis of George Eliot,
the realistic novels of Elizabeth Gaskell, and the nationalistic stories and fables of Rudyard
Kipling. Many writers also found a new audience in children, giving rise to work such as
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and generating later classics such as
Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit stories, A.A.
Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and even, it can be argued, the late
20th-century work of J.K. Rowling.
English literature in the 20th century was remade by

native writers such as Virginia Woolf. It also absorbed
and transmuted alien elements, taking into the
mainstream of its tradition poets as Irish as William
Butler Yeats, as Welsh as Dylan Thomas, or as
Virginia Woolf securely in the classic line as the American expatriates
Virginia Woolf, photograph by Gisèle T.S. Eliot and Henry James. Popular novelists such as
Freund, 1939.
Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Dick Francis, and John
Le Carré fed the English love for mysteries and police
procedurals, while poets W.H. Auden, Ted Hughes, and Philip Larkin brought a new
approach to questions of personal relationships, and novelists Anthony Burgess, Graham
Greene, and Kingsley Amis dealt with moral ambiguities and modern dilemmas. Many
others, including Iris Murdoch and Martin Amis, worked in a well-established comic or
satiric vein. Immigration continued to diversify England’s literary landscape, producing
writers such as V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, and Kazuo Ishiguro. (For further discussion,
see English literature.)
Architecture
English architecture has varied significantly by location, according to readily available
building materials. The typical Cotswold village, for example, consists of structures of the
local silvery limestone with slate roofs. A honey-coloured stone was much used in Oxford,
and a rusty ironstone is typical in northern Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire, along the
line of an ironstone belt. Half-timber framing and thatch roofing are characteristic of the
river valleys, and excellent clay provides the warm red brick of southern England. The ease
with which cheap but nonnative materials can now be transported is to be blamed for many
jarring intrusions into the harmonious towns and villages originally built mainly of local
materials.
Stylistically, English architecture has been much

influenced from abroad, but foreign styles take on an
English aspect. The Gothic architecture of France was
transformed into a characteristically English style by
the delicate use of stone to provide a framework for
London: St. Paul's Cathedral walls that were almost all glass, culminating in
St. Paul's Cathedral, London; triumphs of the Perpendicular style, such as King’s
designed by Sir Christopher Wren.
College Chapel at Cambridge. The European
Renaissance influenced the buildings of Christopher
Wren, yet his many London churches seem essentially
English; though Wren’s work was derided as old-
fashioned when he was alive, the buildings are now
considered among England’s greatest architectural
London: St. Paul's Cathedral accomplishments. Similarly, the magnificent country
West facade of St. Paul's Cathedral, houses of the 18th century are not mere importations
London. of a foreign fashion but fit their landscape; and many
such landscapes were designed by the great English
garden and park designers William Kent, Lancelot
(“Capability”) Brown, and Humphry Repton. This
type of collaboration can be seen in the later work of
Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll.
London: St. Paul's Cathedral
Many urban slums and industrial structures have been
Western view from the Golden Gallery
of St. Paul's Cathedral, London. earmarked for demolition, but much contemporary
building that is adequate for habitation or work is
drearily uninspired. Still, England continues to produce high-calibre internationally known

architects such as James Stirling and Norman Foster. The reconstruction of the World War
II-damaged city areas provided opportunities for notable new architecture, and some
original design and construction was undertaken; examples include the Barbican scheme in
a large bombed area in London, north of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the Royal National
Theatre on the south bank of the Thames. Among London’s more notable modern buildings
are the headquarters for Lloyd’s in the City and the controversial Millennium Dome at
Greenwich, which at its completion in 1999 was the largest enclosed space in the world.
Outside London, notable projects include the Coventry precinct and cathedral by Sir Basil
Spence, the Roman Catholic cathedral in Liverpool, designed by Sir Frederick Gibberd, and
a batch of new universities founded during the 1960s, such as those near Brighton,
Canterbury, Colchester, Norwich, and York.
Increasingly, however, architects have sought to

modernize or imitate old structures, rather than design
completely new ones. Thus the building that housed
the Covent Garden flower market has become one of
London’s most visited arcades, containing shops,
Globe Theatre restaurants, and informal entertainment; a power
Nighttime view of the reconstructed station on the south bank of the Thames has been
Globe Theatre (completed in 1997)
converted into Tate Modern, the world’s largest
from across the River Thames,
London. modern art gallery; and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre
has been rebuilt of materials like those of the original
and to the specifications of the original design.
London’s riverside, like that of many other cities, has
been transformed by the conversion of old buildings,
especially warehouses, into modern homes and
apartments.
Tate Modern
Tate Modern, Bankside, London. Immigration, too, has changed the architectural look
of England, especially with the many new non-
Christian houses of worship that have been built.
Hundreds of Hindu temples and Muslim mosques
have been established throughout the country since
World War II, and some of them, such as the Hindu
Neasden: Shri Swaminarayan temple constructed in the 1990s north of London in
Temple Neasden, have generated much commentary—both
Shri Swaminarayan Temple, Neasden, praise and criticism for their sheer size and
Brent, London.
ornateness.
Visual arts
Sculpture
Apart from traces of decoration on standing stones and the “transplanted” art of Roman
occupation, the history of sculpture in England is rooted in the Christian church.
Monumental crosses of carved stone, similar to the Celtic crosses of Ireland, represent the
earliest sculpture of Anglo-Saxon Christians. The tradition of relief carving attained its
highest expression in the stonework of the Gothic cathedrals, such as that at Wells (c. 1225–
40).
The influences of Renaissance and Baroque sculpture

on the Continent were slow to reach England. What
borrowings there were prior to the 18th century
remained ill-conceived and crudely executed. From
the 1730s, however, the presence of first-rate foreign
Antony Gormley: Angel of the artists, together with the flowering of archaeology and
North
the resulting accessibility of antique art, brought a
Angel of the North, steel sculpture by
new refinement to English sculpture. The Roman
Antony Gormley, 1998; near
Gateshead, England. influence that precipitated Neoclassicism gave way in
England to the Greek with the arrival of the Parthenon
sculptures, known as the Elgin Marbles, which were taken from the temple and sold to the
British Museum in the early 1800s. While the Romantic movement of the 19th century,
which assailed the academic restraint of Neoclassicism in all the arts, invested continental
sculpture with an increasing subjectivity, as well as a broader range of subject matter, the
sculptors of England pursued a more conservative path. Many free-standing public
monuments—the descendants of sepulchral effigies—date from this period. Not until the
20th century did English sculptors break free of traditional bounds and attain a deeply
personal mode of expression. The sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth both came
from Yorkshire, and something of the quality of moorland stone can be seen in their work.
In 1998 the largest sculpture ever executed in Britain was unveiled—Angel of the North,
created by Antony Gormley. Made of steel, 65 feet (20 metres) high, and with a 169-foot
(52-metre) span, it dominates the skyline near Gateshead, south of the River Tyne.
Painting
Painting in England emerged under the auspices of the church. From the 8th to the 14th
century the illumination of Gospel manuscripts developed from essentially abstract
decoration derived from Celtic motifs to self-contained pictorial illustration more in
keeping with the style of the European continent. In the 15th century, Italian innovations in
perspective and composition began to appear in English work. The advent of printing
during this period, however, rendered the labour-intensive illumination increasingly rare.
English painting remained largely unaffected by the concerns of the Renaissance, and it
was not until the 1630s, when Charles I employed the Flemish Baroque painters Peter Paul
Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck in his court, that a broader artistic current reached
England’s shores. Even so, provincial themes and the genres of portrait and landscape
continued to preoccupy English painters for the next 150 years.
The foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768

provided a focal point for the currents of
Neoclassicism in English architecture, sculpture, and
painting. Under the aegis of the academy, painters
rendered historical and mythological subjects with a
William Blake: Pity bold linear clarity. Just as the strictures of
Pity, colour print finished in pen and Neoclassicism developed partly in reaction to the
watercolour by William Blake, 1795; in
excesses of the Baroque and Rococo, Romanticism
the Tate Collection, London.
emerged partly in defiance of academic formality.
Classical antiquity, however, particularly in its ruined
state, continued to provide themes and imagery. The
works of the poet and painter William Blake
epitomize the spiritual preoccupations of the period.
Advances in science inspired a renewed artistic
J.M.W. Turner: Rain, Steam, and
interest in the natural world. John Constable and
Speed—the Great Western
Railway J.M.W. Turner anticipated the French Impressionist
Rain, Steam, and Speed—the Great movement by more than half a century in their
Western Railway, oil on canvas by landscape paintings charged with light and
J.M.W. Turner, 1844; in the National
atmosphere. The early Romantic fascination with
Gallery, London.
biblical and medieval themes resurged in the mid 19th
century among the so-called Pre-Raphaelite painters, who combined technical precision
with explicit moral content.
The emergence of the artist-craftsman, as exemplified by the Pre-Raphaelite Edward

Burne-Jones and the designer and social theorist William Morris, brought new vigour to the
decorative arts in England. Their successors exhibited

a strong affinity for the Continental Art Nouveau
movement. Notable 20th-century English painters
included R.B. Kitaj (born in the United States),
Bridget Riley, David Hockney, Peter Blake, Francis
Bacon, Francis: Three Studies of Bacon (born in Dublin of English parents), and
Lucian Freud
Gilbert and George.
Three Studies of Lucian Freud,
triptych by Francis Bacon, 1969. Performing arts
Theatre
Theatre is probably the performing art for which England is best known. Theatrical
performance as such emerged during the Middle Ages in the form of mumming plays,
which borrowed elements from wandering entertainers, traditional and ancient folk
agricultural rituals, and dances such as the Morris dance (with its set character parts). Under
the influence of Christianity, mumming plays gradually were absorbed by mystery plays
(centred on the Passion of Christ).
In the 16th century, when England’s King Henry VIII rejected Rome and formed a national
church, Latin theatrical traditions also were rejected; consequently, the Elizabethan and
Jacobean ages forged a distinctive tradition and produced some extraordinary and highly
influential playwrights, particularly Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson. A
later influence on theatre in England was the rise in the 19th century of the actor-manager,
the greatest being Henry Irving.
That England remains one of the foremost

contributors to world theatre can be seen in its lively
theatrical institutions, such as the Royal Shakespeare
Company (1864; reorganized in 1961 by Peter Hall),
the Royal National Theatre (1962), regional theatres
David Hare such as the Bristol Old Vic, and the great number of
theatres that flourish in London’s celebrated West End
district. Moreover, throughout the 20th century the
works of English playwrights were much acclaimed:
from Noël Coward’s bittersweet plays of the 1930s to
the “kitchen sink” dramas of the 1950s by the Angry
Monty Python's Flying Circus Young Men, such as John Osborne, to the more recent
(From left to right) John Cleese, contributions of Harold Pinter, Edward Bond, David
Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Graham
Chapman, and Terry Jones in a sketch Hare, Howard Brenton, Alan Ayckbourn, Tom
for Monty Python's Flying Circus, Stoppard, and Caryl Churchill and the musical
1971.
extravaganzas of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Similarly,
English actors, many of them trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, continue to be
among the world’s best-known. Many are skilled dramatic actors, but just as many are
comic. Honed on the stages in the music-hall tradition, English comedy—from the lowbrow
humour of Benny Hill to the more cerebral work of Rowan Atkinson, Spike Milligan, Peter
Sellers, and the Monty Python group—has been one of the country’s most successful
cultural exports. (See also theatre, history of.)
Film
England’s contributions to motion pictures date from the
experiments with cinematography by William Friese-
Greene in the late 19th century, but, because Britain
presented a natural market for American English-
language films, the British film industry was slow in
Alfred Hitchcock
developing. The Cinematograph Film Act of 1927
required that an escalating percentage of films shown in
Britain be made domestically; as a result, during the 1930s there was a dramatic increase in
British productions and the emergence of “quota quickies,” films made in England with
Hollywood control and financing. During this period Alfred Hitchcock emerged as
England’s first great film director with early classics such as The Thirty-nine Steps (1935)
and Sabotage (1936).
In the 1940s and early ’50s a series of social comedies made by Ealing Studios, including
films such as Kind Hearts and Coronets and Passport to Pimlico, brought further
international acclaim to the British film industry. The Pinewood and Elstree movie studios
also produced dozens of films, from low-budget horror films to the avant-garde work of
Richard Lester. In contrast to the lavish films of David Lean and Michael Powell from this
period, a movement of social-realist films emerged in the 1960s; rooted in the Free Cinema
documentary movement and borrowing from the Angry Young Men school of British
literature and drama, films by directors such as Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, and Tony
Richardson kept alive a British film industry that was increasingly becoming a satellite of
the United States, which provided much of the funding for “English” films such as the
James Bond series.
In the 1980s the productions of David Puttnam and the collaborations of Ismail Merchant
and James Ivory led a resurgence of British moviemaking, which continued into the 21st
century with the quintessentially English films of Hugh Hudson, Kenneth Branagh, Mike
Leigh, and Ken Loach. In addition, Nick Park’s pioneering animated shorts and feature
films, such as the Wallace and Gromit series and Chicken Run (2000), garnered
international renown. The nearness of film studios to the London stage allows directors and
actors to pursue careers in both mediums to an extent unknown in the United States. Their
work is also supported by the highly active Film Council, a government board that works
with the public and private sectors to ensure the viability of the English film industry. (For
further discussion, see motion picture.)
Music
The beginnings of art music in England can be traced to plainsong (plainchant). With the
aid of monks and troubadours traveling throughout Europe, musical forms of many regions
were freely intermingled and spread quickly. In the 16th and 17th centuries, England
produced many notable composers, among them John Dowland, Thomas Morley, Thomas
Tallis, and, perhaps greatest of all, William Byrd. The musical stature of the Baroque
composers Henry Purcell and George Frideric Handel remains unquestioned. Music in
England reached another peak in the late 19th century, when comic opera attained near
perfection in the work of William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. Later significant composers
include Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, William Walton, and Benjamin Britten.
Opera is regularly performed by the Royal Opera at Covent Garden, London, by the
English National Opera, and by other companies. A world-renowned opera festival is held
annually at Glyndebourne, and music festivals of many other types thrive. England also has
a number of orchestras, chamber groups, choruses, and cathedral choirs. The Sir Henry
Wood Promenade Concerts, popularly known as the “Proms” and sponsored by the British
Broadcasting Corporation, play nightly from July to September at London’s Royal Albert
Hall, forming the largest regular classical music festival in the world.
English folk music—exemplified by ballads, sea

chanteys, children’s game songs, carols, and street
cries—has had a tremendous influence on the folk
music, and even the hymnody, of the United States,
Canada, and other former colonies; periodic revivals,
the Rolling Stones especially in the late 1960s and mid-1990s, helped to
The Rolling Stones in the mid-1960s.
keep English folk music before a broad public. Drawing on the folk and classical traditions
alike, anthems such as “God Save the Queen”, “Jerusalem,” and “Land of Hope and Glory”
are held in great affection. However, 20th-century British popular music, especially rock
music, had even more visible impact on world culture. Beginning in the 1950s with skiffle
groups, young Britons began borrowing from American blues, rhythm and blues, and rock
and roll to create their own version of each. By the mid-1960s, English “beat” groups such
as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and the Who had burst onto the world stage;
in the United States their sensational popularity was labeled the British Invasion.
Thereafter, rock and pop music remained among Britain’s main cultural exports, marked by
the international popularity of Led Zeppelin, Elton John, and Pink Floyd in the 1970s and
punk groups such as the Sex Pistols and the Clash later in the decade; performers as various
as the Police, the Smiths, Boy George, the Spice Girls, Oasis, Blur, and Radiohead in the
1980s and ’90s; and the techno music of the turn of the century.
Dance
Closely associated with song in folk tradition, folk dances have their origins in many of the
same sources—mummers’ dances, masques, and assorted ancient rituals of birth, courtship,
war, death, and rebirth. In England remnants of early forms of sword dances, Morris
dances, and country dances remain popular participatory entertainment. From the 14th to
the 17th century, performance-oriented dances, including court dances and dances
developed for the stage, were much in evidence in more sophisticated circles of society.
Although dancing masters and ballet as such were in existence from the 18th century, a
native impulse toward the ballet really began to take hold in England only in the early 20th
century, when Irish-born Ninette de Valois and Lilian Baylis established the Vic-Wells
Ballet (now the Royal Ballet) and Marie Rambert formed the Ballet Club (now Dance
Rambert). These highly talented women fostered ballet and its offshoot, modern dance.
With their leadership, England advanced to the forefront of dance in the 20th century,
producing internationally known artists such as Frederick Ashton, Anton Dolin, Margot
Fonteyn, Kenneth MacMillan, Alicia Markova, Bronisława Nijinska, and Antony Tudor.
Cultural institutions
All manner of general and esoteric societies,
institutions, museums, and foundations can be found
in England. One of its more prestigious learned
societies is the Royal Society (1660), which awards
Kew Gardens
fellowships, medals, and endowed lectureships based
on scientific and technological achievements. The

British Museum contains a wealth of archaeological
and ethnographic specimens; its extensive library—
containing ancient and medieval manuscripts and
papyruses—was merged in 1973 with several other
British Museum, London holdings to form the British Library, which was in
British Museum, London, at dusk. turn relocated to a new structure near St. Pancras
Station, in London, in the late 1990s. The Zoological
Society of London maintains the London Zoo and also conducts research, publishes
journals, and supports a large zoological library. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, are
significant both as a research institute and as one of England’s many places of great natural
beauty. There are also notable libraries at the University of Cambridge and at the University
of Oxford (the Bodleian Library).
Art galleries abound in England. The best-known are

based in London and include the National Gallery, the
Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Portrait
Gallery, two Tate galleries—Tate Britain (with superb
collections of John Constable and the Pre-
Clore Gallery Raphaelites) and Tate Modern—and the Wallace
Interior of the Clore Gallery at the Tate Collection.
Britain, London, by James Stirling,
1980–87.
Sports and recreation
Although England has a lively cultural life, its characteristic pursuits are of a more popular
kind. The exploitation of leisure is increasingly the concern of commerce: foreign holiday
package tours, gambling of many kinds (from bingo to horse-race and political betting), and
the transformation of the traditional English pub by trendy interior decoration. The English
weekend is the occasion for countryside trips and for outdoor activities from fishing to
mountaineering. England gave to the world the sports of cricket, football (soccer), and
rugby football but now seldom shines at any of these in international competitions. Among
the most popular sports and recreational activities in which the English participate are
angling, basketball, snooker, and swimming. Yet the most commonly accepted leisure
activities are those connected with the home, including both traditional and more modern,
electronic distractions. Domestic comforts, epitomized in the cozy charm of cottages and
gardens and the pervasive ritual of afternoon tea, continue to figure prominently in the
character of English life. (For further discussion, including details on sporting culture, see
United Kingdom: Cultural life.)
Media and publishing

Centred in London, the broadcasting and print media in England are vast and exercise
influence not only within England and the United Kingdom but throughout the world. Daily
newspapers published in London include The Times, one of the world’s oldest newspapers;
The Sun, a tabloid that is the country’s most widely read paper, with circulation in the
millions; the The Daily Telegraph; and The Guardian (also published in Manchester).
Major regional dailies include the Manchester Evening News, the Wolverhampton Express
and Star, the Nottingham Evening Post, and the Yorkshire Post. Periodicals, such as The
Economist, also exert considerable international influence.
William Harford Thomas Peter Kellner The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

History
The history of England is given in the article United Kingdom.
Citation Information
Article Title: England
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 03 March 2024
URL: https://www.britannica.comhttps://www.britannica.com/place/England
Data de acesso: 06 de março de 2024

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Fora das Ilhas Governo e sociedade

Britânicas, a Inglaterra Vida cultural

é muitas vezes História

Inglaterra. Hoje, a área metropolitana de Londres abrange grande parte do sudeste de

Uma das características fundamentais do inglês é a diversidade dentro de uma pequena

Com a perda do vasto império ultramarino da Grã-Bretanha em meados do século XX, a

As colinas conhecidas como Chilterns , North York Moors e Yorkshire e Lincolnshire

A complexidade geológica da Inglaterra é ilustrada de forma impressionante na estrutura do

Plant and animal life

More significant is the structure of towns and villages,

The South West

The South East

The West Midlands

The East Midlands

The North West

The North East

Agriculture, forestry, and fishing

Resources and power

About one-fifth of England’s workers are employed in manufacturing. Major industries

England’s internal subdivisions and administrative units include distinct historic,

Administrative counties and districts

Metropolitan counties and districts

Parishes and towns

The legal system is divided into civil and criminal

Health and welfare

Daily life and social customs

“Britishness.” The monarch’s official birthday is also observed nationally and

English cuisine has traditionally been based on beef,

Other traditional English dishes include scones,

In its literature, England arguably has attained its

bangers and mash

The dichotomy of Classicism and Romanticism as

William Wordsworth later Romantic self-expression of William Blake,

English literature in the 20th century was remade by

Stylistically, English architecture has been much

drearily uninspired. Still, England continues to produce high-calibre internationally known

Increasingly, however, architects have sought to

The influences of Renaissance and Baroque sculpture

The foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768

The emergence of the artist-craftsman, as exemplified by the Pre-Raphaelite Edward

decorative arts in England. Their successors exhibited

That England remains one of the foremost

English folk music—exemplified by ballads, sea

on scientific and technological achievements. The

Art galleries abound in England. The best-known are

Media and publishing

William Harford Thomas Peter Kellner The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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