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CHAPTER ONE
A Short History
Back in England's oldest times, people lived in big groups
called tribes. They were farmers - they grew their food, and
kept animals for meat and eggs. They lived in villages, in
wooden or mud houses, and there was often fighting between
the different tribes. Life was simple but dangerous.
Then in AD 43, forty thousand Roman soldiers invaded
England from the area of Europe that is now Italy. The Roman
army was very well-organized and had good weapons. The
soldiers built a wall around themselves every night so they
were safe. They moved across the country, fighting and
winning battles against the different tribes, and after four years
they controlled the south of England.
The Romans had to fight for many years before they
controlled all of England. They made many changes in the
country, such as building towns and cities, and good roads.
They brought a new language to England - Latin - and made
laws, so people knew what they could and could not do. The
religion of Christianity came to England in Roman times too.
The Romans never took control of Scotland, which is
north of England, and Scottish tribes came to fight against
them in the north of England again and again. Because of this,
in the second century AD, the Romans built a wall to stop the
Scottish tribes coming to England. This wall between England
and Scotland was one hundred and twenty kilometers long, and
was called Hadrian's Wall.
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For English people in towns and cities, life in Roman

times was good. Towns now had clean water and sewers (pipes
taking away dirty water), and there were strong walls around
them, so people felt safe. People came to the towns to buy and
sell things, and food became more interesting and enjoyable.
To relax, people could go to special bath houses, where they
met their friends, kept clean and exercised.
But after AD 250, Roman soldiers began to leave
England. They had to fight in other parts of the world, and it
was too expensive and difficult for them to keep England safe.
By AD 411, all the Roman soldiers had left England. Then the
Anglo-Saxons, from Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark,
began to arrive. The Anglo-Saxons had come to England
several times before, but the Romans had always defeated
them. Now, with the Romans gone, the English could not win
battles against the Anglo-Saxons, and many Anglo-Saxons
came to live in England.
The Anglo-Saxons did not like the Romans' towns, so
they did not use them, and the towns stayed empty. The
AngloSaxons built their own villages near rivers or the sea and
made wooden houses. In their villages, they grew crops - plants
they could use for food. They also kept pigs, sheep and cows,
and caught fish and other animals.
By AD 600 in England, the AngloSaxons had made seven
kingdoms - different parts of the country, each controlled by its
own king. The four main kingdoms were Northumbria, Mercia,
East Anglia and Wessex. The three minor kingdoms were
Essex, Kent and Sussex. In each of these kingdoms, the king
had nobles - important men who fought for him. The other
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people in the kingdom were either peasants or slaves. Peasants

were poor people who had some land, but had to give money to
the nobles. Slaves had nothing and had to work for other
people for no money at all. People bought and sold slaves like
animals.
The Anglo-Saxons stayed in England, but in AD 793 a
new group of people invaded the country. The Vikings, from
Norway, Sweden and Denmark, wanted good farming land.
They came to England in strong wooden ships, and soon they
took control of many parts of the country. But the Anglo-Saxon
king of Wessex, Alfred the Great, won a big battle against the
Vikings. After this, part of England, called Danelaw, was given
to the Vikings, but the Vikings had to promise not to invade
other parts of the country.
After Alfred the Great died, the Viking and Anglo-Saxon
parts of England came together, and England was now ruled as
one country with one king. The Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons
continued to fight a lot, and for a while England had Viking
kings, but by 1042, the Anglo-Saxon King Edward ruled
England.
With Edward as the king, London became the most
important city in England. Edward had many nobles, and he let
them become very powerful. He had no children, so when he
died, one of his nobles, Harold, became the king. But Edward's
cousin William, a Norman (from the north of France), believed
that he should be the king of England. In October 1066,
William brought a big Norman army from France to England.
The Normans fought against Harold and his soldiers at the
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Battle of Hastings. Harold was killed, and William the

Conqueror, as he was called, became the king of England.
William the Conqueror made many important changes in
England. A lot of castles were built. One of these was the
Tower of London, which you can visit today. William the
Conqueror brought the feudal system to England. In the feudal
system, the richest and most important person was the king.
Below the king were the nobles, then the knights and then the
serfs, who were the poorest people in the land. The king owned
everything in the country, but he gave a castle and land to his
nobles, and they paid him money. The nobles gave land to the
knights, who had to fight battles for the nobles and the king.
The knights gave some land to the serfs, who had to work for
the knights and give them food from the land.
William the Conqueror wanted to know exactly what he
had in England. He sent people all around the country, asking
many questions, and they made a big book called the
Domesday Book. The book showed how much farming land
there was in England and how many animals. We know a lot
about life in Norman England because of the Domesday Book.
The time from William the Conqueror's rule until the
fifteenth century in England is often called the Middle Ages. In
the Middle Ages, most people lived in villages. The people of
the village had to work for the nobles, and give them crops and
animals. The nobles lived very well, in big houses and with
expensive food, but most people were very poor.
Religion was very important in the Middle Ages, and the
Catholic Church became very powerful. From 1095 to 1291,
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soldiers went to other countries to fight religious battles. There

was more fighting in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as
France and England fought the Hundred Years War, hoping to
win land from each other. Many of the battles of the Hundred
Years War were fought by knights. As well as fighting battles
for nobles and for the king, knights also fought as a sport in
competitions called jousting tournaments. Young men who
wanted to become knights had to spend many years learning all
the things that a knight could do.
In 1348, a terrible illness called The Black Death came to
England. Only about four million people lived in England at
that time, but in two years, nearly one-and-a-half million of
them died.
From 1455-1485, there were terrible battles between
people who wanted the kings of the country to be from
different families, and many more people died. Finally, in
1485, Henry Tudor became the first Tudor king of England,
King Henry the Seventh.
Some of the Tudor kings and queens are now very famous
in England's history. Henry the Eighth, who became the king in
1509, lived some of the time at the Tower of London, but he
had other beautiful palaces in and around London, including
the Palace of Westminster and Hampton Court. He and the
people around him lived very well. They wore the best clothes
and ate wonderful food, and at the palaces there was always
dancing, sport, poetry and music. Henry enjoyed life, and he
drank and ate too much. When he became the king, he was a
sporty, good-looking young man, but later he became so fat he
could not walk!
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England was a Catholic country, but Henry the Eighth

wanted England to leave the Catholic Church, so he started a
new church. It was a Protestant church (a Christian church, but
for people who believe in a different kind of Christianity)
called the Church of England, and he controlled it. Anyone
who disagreed with the new church was executed - killed for
their crime. When Henry the Eighth was ruling England, more
than seventy thousand people were killed because of crimes, or
because they disagreed with the king about religion or other
important things.
Six years after Henry the Eighth died, his oldest daughter
Mary - the daughter he had with his first wife, Catherine of
Aragon - became Queen Mary the First of England. She was a
Catholic and wanted England to be a Catholic country again,
but many people had left the Catholic Church and had become
Protestants. Mary executed hundreds of Protestants who
refused to become Catholic again.
But in 1558, Mary died, and her half-sister Elizabeth - the
daughter Henry had with his second wife Anne Boleyn -
became the queen. Queen Elizabeth the First was a Protestant,
but she did not make Catholics follow her religion, and she
soon became one of the best loved of England's kings and
queens.
The second half of the sixteenth century, which was
known as the Elizabethan period, was a very important time for
English literature. Many people liked to go to the theatre, and
William Shakespeare wrote a lot of plays and poetry at this
time. Ships also began to travel to other parts of the world. Sir
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Walter Raleigh sailed to America, and Sir Francis Drake

became the first Englishman to sail around the world.
But life in England was also very difficult for many
people in the Elizabethan period. There was less work in
farming now, and a lot of people were very poor. There was a
lot of crime, but no police, and when people were caught for
crimes, they were often executed.
Alter Queen Elizabeth the First died in 1603, kings and
queens called the Stuarts came to power in England. The
Stuarts were from Scotland, and for the first time, they ruled
both England and Scotland. The second of the Stuart kings was
Charles the First. He argued with Parliament because he spent a
lot of money fighting wars in Europe, and in 1642, he started a
civil war. For seven years, the King's men and Parliaments men
fought against each other, and thousands died. But with Oliver
Cromwell as leader, Parliaments army became very strong and
fought very well, and in 1649, they won the war. Charles the
First was executed, and for eleven years England had no king
or queen. The country was ruled by Cromwell and Parliament.
Cromwell was a Puritan - a Protestant who believed in a
simple, hard-working life - and when he ruled, there was no
sport or dancing in England, and theatres were closed.
When Cromwell died, England was ready to have a king
again, and the Stuarts came to power once more. There were
some difficult times for England in the second half of the
seventeenth century. In 1665, another terrible illness came to
London and killed nearly seventy thousand people, and a year
later, large parts of London were burnt down in the Great Fire
of London.
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There were many other changes at this time too. England

now traded - bought and sold things - with many other
countries, so English people could get different foods like
tomatoes, chocolate, coffee and tea for the first time. People
continued to work on the land, but now there were other jobs,
in cloth-making or glass-making, and in the coal or iron
industries. London was rebuilt with wider roads and many
beautiful new buildings, and scientists like Sir Isaac Newton
began to do important work and learn many interesting things.
England started its first colonies too. These were other parts of
the world, like America, which were ruled by England. For the
first time in the seventeenth century, people from England went
to live and work in these places.
There was one more important change as England entered
the eighteenth century. In 1707, the Act of Union brought
England, Wales and Scotland together with one parliament as
Great Britain.
The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were called
the Georgian period because Britain's kings were George the
First, Second, Third and Fourth. But during this time, kings
became much less powerful, and Parliament really began to
rule the country. An industrial revolution began in Britain too:
machines were built, and they were used in many different
industries. People could now make many things very quickly,
and because of this towns began to grow.
In 1783, Britain lost the American War of Independence,
so America was no longer ruled by Britain and became
independent. Britain did not have its old American colonies
anymore, but it now found new ones. In that same year, France
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gave its colonies in Canada to Britain, and by the end of the

eighteenth century, Britain had won many battles in India,
which soon became an important part of the British Empire.
This was a great time for exploration: travelling to different
places to find new things. The famous sailor Captain Cook
visited many new lands and was the first European to go to
Australia and New Zealand.
In 1801, Ireland and Britain came together as the United
Kingdom (UK) with one parliament. (Today, Northern Ireland
is the only part of Ireland which belongs to the UK.) The ruler
of this new UK, from 1837 until 1901, was Queen Victoria.
Victoria ruled for longer than any other English or British king
or queen, and she was much loved by many of her people.
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In the Victorian period, the British

Empire became bigger and more important, and the
industrial revolution continued. The country was growing, but
at first this made life difficult for many people. More and more
factories were built in the UK, and factory work was very hard
and very dangerous. Towns got bigger and bigger, but people
put their rubbish and dirty water in the streets, so there was a
lot of illness.
But soon important new changes started to happen.
Towns became cleaner, and in 1880, all children aged 5-10
began to go to school. People had electric lights and telephones
for the first time, and because the railways grew, they could
now travel around the country easily. By 1901, when Queen
Victoria died, the modern United Kingdom was arriving.
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CHAPTER TWO
England in the Modern UK
In the early 1900s, the UK was one of the most powerful
countries in the world, with a big empire. The industrial
revolution was changing many peoples lives, and steamships
and cars were widely used for the first time.
Rich people lived very well, with beautiful houses and
servants, but poor people had few clothes and little to eat, and
their children were often ill. Life was difficult for women in the
UK at this time too. People expected women to stay at home
with their families, and they could not get well-paid jobs. It
was very difficult for women to go to university, and they
could not vote. In 1903, a group of women called the
suffragettes, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, organized meetings
and marches, asking for Parliament to give women the vote.
In 1914, the UK and its allies, France and Russia, went to
war with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Many young men
chose to fight.
They believed the war would be very short, but it went on
for four years, and nearly three quarters of a million soldiers
from the UK were killed. While the men were fighting, women
had to do the men's jobs at home. Women soon showed that
they could work in farming, factories and even in the coal
industry.
After helping their country to win the First World War,
workers and women in England wanted better lives. Men got
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their jobs at home back from the women, so most women were
no longer working, but in 1918, women over thirty were given
the vote for the first time. From 1929, women, like men, could
vote from the age of twenty-one. A new political party for
working people - the Labour Party - became important in
politics at this time, and in 1926, half a million workers went
on strike to fight against low pay and long working hours. But
life became even more difficult for workers in 1929, when the
world went into an economic depression. Prices fell, there was
less trade, and many shops and factories closed. By 1931,
nearly three million people in the UK had lost their jobs.
The First World War was fought mainly in battles on
fields in France, but almost everyone in the UK had a difficult
life because of the Second World War (1939-45). Many
children had to leave their homes and go to live in the
countryside. This was because at the end of 1940 and the
beginning of 1941, the Germans dropped many bombs on
London and other cities. This was called the Blitz. Many
people lost their homes and their families, and everyone had to
live on rations - they could only buy fixed amounts of many
kinds of food.
'When we heard the air raid warning in the middle of the
night, everyone woke up and got into the shelters.
The Second World War ended in 1945, and big changes
were made by a new Labour government. Most importantly, the
UK now had a National Health Service, so anyone who was ill
could see a doctor or go to hospital without paying. The
government also now gave money to help people who were ill
or old, or had lost their jobs. Because of the Education Act of
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1944, there were also free places in schools for children up to

the age of fifteen.
Another change after the Second World War was that
more women went to work. They had shown that they could do
men's jobs, and many of them had done important war work. In
some homes, nothing was different for women, but over the
next fifty years, women in the UK slowly saw changes for
themselves in education, work and at home. Their lives would
never be the same again.
After the Second World War, many of the UK's colonies
wanted to rule themselves. The south of Ireland had already
become independent from the UK in 1921, so the country had
now become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland. People from the colonies had fought for the
UK during the war, and they felt they had won their freedom.
In 1947, India, once a very important part of the Empire,
became independent. In the next twenty years, most of the
other colonies also did the same. They became independent,
but joined the Commonwealth, an organization of the
governments of the UK's old colonies.
The UK needed more workers to help rebuild the country
after the war, so the government invited other Europeans and
people from the colonies of the old Empire to move there.
Hoping to find good new jobs, many people came, mainly from
Europe, India, Pakistan and the West Indies. In 1945, there
were only a few thousand non-white people in the UK, but by
1970, there were 1.4 million. Sadly, there were often problems
in later years when some of the people born in the UK felt that
immigrants and their families were taking too many jobs. There
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is some racism - when people do not like others because they

have a different colour skin - in the UK today. But most people
do not like racism and want all people in the UK to live
together happily.
In 1952, Elizabeth the Second became the new queen of
the UK, and millions of people watched her coronation on TV.
The first TVs were made in the 1920s, but many English
people bought TVs for the first time for the coronation, and in
the 1950s, TV started to become an important part of life in
England.
There were many changes in the UK in the second half of
the twentieth century. Many of the country's traditional
industries, for example iron, cloth, coal and shipbuilding,
began to have problems, and people working in those industries
lost their jobs. New industries became more important, for
example banking and pharmaceuticals (drugs and medicines).
England today is a very different place than it was one
hundred years ago. Today, England is one of the most
multicultural countries in the world, and many people from the
West Indies, Africa, India, China, South-East Asia and eastern
Europe live here. More than two hundred and fifty different
languages are spoken in London! Probably because of this,
there are also many religions in England. England is a
Christian country, but different religions are freely followed,
and there are many Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Buddhist
people here.
Society has changed in England too. One hundred years
ago, most people married in their early twenties or younger and
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then had children, but today many more people live alone, and
most do not get married or have children until they are in their
thirties or older.
England's place in the world, as part of the UK, is also
very different. The UK does not have an empire now, but it is
an important country in Europe and became a member of the
European Union (then called the EEC) in 1973. The UK works
very closely with the United States of America (USA), and it
also continues to be a member of the Commonwealth, together
with fifty-two other countries from around the world. Members
of the Commonwealth meet every two years to decide how
they can best work together.
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CHAPTER THREE
Traditions
Because England is such an old country, it has many
traditions. Some of these have come from important or
interesting moments in history. Some have come from other
parts of the world. Others have come from England's many
kings or queens, or from its long religious history.
There are special days and festivals throughout the year in
England, but only a few are bank holidays - days when people
do not have to work. Christmas is one of the most important
religious festivals in England. Christmas Day, 25th December,
and the next day, Boxing Day, are always bank holidays, and
most people spend this time with family or friends.
Traditionally, people eat turkey on Christmas Day, with
Brussels sprouts and cranberry sauce; and for dessert there is
usually Christmas pudding, a type of cake made with dried
fruit.
Not long before Christmas, people decorate42 their
houses and send cards to people they know. On Christmas Day,
there are presents from friends and family, and, for the
children, from Father Christmas (or Santa Claus). Children
believe that Father Christmas brings the presents on 24th
December, Christmas Eve, and leaves them to be opened on the
morning of Christmas Day.
New Year's Eve is also important in England. Many
people go to the Houses of Parliament in London to hear Big
Ben (the bell inside the big clock tower) strike midnight and to
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see the wonderful fireworks near the River Thames. Other

people meet up with friends and family, and make New Year's
Resolutions: they decide what things they will do (or not do!)
in the next year.
On Valentine's Day, 14th February, people give cards or
presents to the people they love, but April Fool's Day, on 1st
April, is a very different kind of celebration. On that day,
people play jokes on their friends and family, and call them an
'April Fool!'. People think April Fool's Day started because,
before 1562, 1st April was the first day of the year. In 1562,
this was changed, so 1st January became the first day of the
year. But many people were slow to remember the change, so
they were laughed at for celebrating New Year's Day on 1st
April.
There is often special food for festivals in England.
Shrove Tuesday, in February, comes the day before the start of
Lent, the forty days before Easter. In the past, people stopped
eating the most important foods - butter, eggs and flour - during
Lent. So on Shrove Tuesday, they made pancakes with these
foods, and ate butter, eggs and flour for the last time. People
continue to eat pancakes today, and there are many pancake
races around the country: people have to run, throwing
pancakes up and down in a frying pan! Today, many people try
to give something up for Lent too - often sweets, cakes or
chocolate!
After Lent comes Easter, another religious festival, and
for people who go to church, a very important time of year.
Easter comes in the spring, and many people give each other
Easter eggs and Easter bunnies (little rabbits) made from
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chocolate. For children, there are often Easter Egg Hunts, when
little eggs are hidden in the house or garden. People also eat hot
cross buns at Easter - warm sweet bread with dried fruit inside
and a cross on top.
May Day in England is on the first day of May, and there
is a bank holiday on or very near that day. This is usually the
start of warmer weather in England, and sometimes people
celebrate with Maypole dancing - dancing around a big pole
with ribbons.
Halloween, on 31st October, has become a popular
festival in modern times. On this night, children dress up as
witches, ghosts and other frightening things, and go from house
to house, calling 'Trick or Treat'. The neighbours give them
sweets and other nice things, but if they have nothing to give,
the children play a trick, or joke, on them.
A strange festival is held on 5th November. On that day in
1605, a man called Guy Fawkes and a group of friends tried to
blow up the Houses of Parliament. They wanted to do this
because King James and his nobles were not treating the
Catholics in the country well. But the king's soldiers found Guy
Fawkes in the Houses of Parliament and stopped him and his
friends.
Now on 5th November every year, there are bonfires and
fireworks all over England on 'Guy Fawkes Night'.
Another day that is important because of something in
history is Remembrance Day, on 11th November. At eleven
o'clock in the morning on that day, at exactly the time when the
First World War ended in 1918, many people are silent for two
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minutes. They remember the many men and women who have
lost their lives in wars. Many people wear paper poppies - red
flowers - on their coats at this time too. Poppies grew on the
battlefields of France after the First World War ended, so they
make people remember the terrible days of the war.
Because kings and queens have always been so important
in England's history, there are many royal traditions. One
important tradition is the State Opening of Parliament. On this
day, the Queen goes from her home at Buckingham Palace to
the Houses of Parliament in a gold carriage and then reads 'the
Queen's speech'. This tells people what the government wants
to do in the next year.
Another important yearly royal tradition is called
'Trooping the Colour'. To celebrate the Queen's birthday, more
than a thousand soldiers and musicians march from
Buckingham Palace to Whitehall and back again, and the
Queen goes past them in her carriage.
On most days at Buckingham Palace, you can also see the
'Changing of the Guard'. This is when one group of soldiers
who were guarding the Queen leave the palace, and another
group arrives. The soldiers who guard the Queen wear red
coats and tall hats, made from real bearskin. They can march in
front of the palace, but when they are standing, they must not
move.
There are many important traditions in sport in England.
One famous example is the Oxford and Cambridge boat race.
Oxford and Cambridge are the two oldest universities in
England, and because both universities are in cities with rivers,
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Oxford and Cambridge students have always enjoyed rowing.

In rowing, two, four or eight people move a boat through water
with long wooden sticks called oars. They sit with their backs
towards the front of the boat, so there is often a person called a
cox at the back, telling them where to go. In 1829, students
from Oxford and Cambridge decided to have a rowing race,
and since then there has been a race on the Thames every year
in spring.
The Oxford and Cambridge boat race: Oxford in dark
blue, Cambridge in light blue
What is traditional English food and drink? Fish and
chips are probably England's most famous dish. Fish and chips
first became popular in the 1860s, when the railways opened
and trains began to bring fish from the east coast of England to
the cities. Fish and chips are usually eaten as takeaway food
(food that is not eaten in a cafe or restaurant), with the fish
wrapped in paper, and the chips covered in salt and vinegar.
Today, Indian and Chinese takeaways are just as popular as fish
and chips.
England is also famous for its breakfasts. Very few people
eat a full English breakfast every day, but you can usually get
one in hotels or cafes. The English breakfast is toast, eggs and
sausages, often with tomatoes, beans, hash browns (potato
cakes) and mushrooms too!
Bangers (sausages) and mash (a mixture of potatoes with
butter and milk) is another traditional dish in England. The
sausages are often called bangers because in times of war,
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when food was rationed, there was usually a lot of water in the
sausages. When they were fried, they often blew up!
The traditional Sunday lunch is a roast dinner, with roast
beef, roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding (a cooked mixture
of eggs, flour and milk). However, many English people now
eat fewer traditional dishes, and English people now eat lots of
different kinds of food from all around the world. But some
traditional English food continues to be very popular. English
farmers make wonderful cheeses like red leicester, cheddar and
Stilton, and at farmers' markets all around the country people
can buy fantastic meat, fish, fruit, vegetables and bread.
Tea, of course, is one of the most important drinks in
England, and in cafes and at home many people like to have
afternoon tea, which is tea with cakes and sandwiches.
English people also like to go to the pub to have a drink
and perhaps to eat. These are places where people come
together to talk, play games, or watch football or rugby
matches.
In different areas of England there are some very strange
traditions. At many fairs, you can see Morris dancing (people
in costumes dancing to music with sticks, swords and
handkerchiefs). In the Lake District, people have a 'gurning'
competition every year. Gurning is trying to make a very
strange face, for example by lifting the bottom of your mouth
up above the top of it! And in a village near Gloucester there is
a cheese rolling competition, in which people run after a cheese
which is moving like a wheel down a very big hill!
CHAPTER FOUR
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Cities and Sights

England has fifty cities and many smaller towns, and
there are lots of things to see and do there.
The biggest city, and England's capital, is London. Nearly
eight million people live in London - more than in any other
European city. The country's government is there, and for
people in many different jobs, London is the most important
place to be for work.
For visitors, too, London has many of England's most
interesting sights and is one of the most important places to
visit. London has many areas, which are often very different,
even if they are very close!
Whitehall and Westminster are the areas where you can
see some of London's most famous sights. Here, next to the
River Thames, are Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. At
one time, England's kings and queens lived in these buildings,
and they were called the Palace of Westminster, but today
Parliament meets here. Near the Houses of Parliament is
Downing Street, where the UK's prime minister - the leader -
lives, and where the government meets. Also near here is
Westminster Abbey, a large and very important church where
England's kings and queens have had their coronations since
the time of William the Conqueror.
Following the Thames to the north, and then towards the
east from Whitehall and Westminster, you come to the West
End. Here you can find theatres, restaurants, cinemas and
clubs. Covent Garden, where there was once a big market, is
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now a great place to go shopping, or to have a coffee and watch

the street entertainers - actors, musicians, dancers and others
who do small shows outside.
Further east is a small area called the City of London,
which was the most important part of London in the Middle
Ages. It is now one of the great financial centers of the world -
a place where money comes in and out, and where England's
big banks work from. Also here is St Paul's Cathedral, which
was built by the great architect Sir Christopher Wren, and the
Tower of London, a castle from the eleventh century.
London is also famous for its large and beautiful parks.
Just minutes from the West End, people can walk, exercise and
relax in the large green areas of Hyde Park, Green Park and St
James's Park. Many people visit London for its museums and
art galleries, and most of these are free. The Tate Modern is the
worlds largest modern art gallery, and at the British Museum,
there are several kilometers of rooms, with more than seventy
thousand things to see.
Many visitors to London like to take a ride on the London
Eye, the largest Ferris wheel in Europe. From the top of the
Eye, at one hundred and thirty- five meters, you can see many
of London's most famous buildings.
Not far from London, you can visit three interesting and
important royal places - Windsor Castle, which continues to be
used by the royal family today, Hampton Court Palace and
Kew Gardens.
It is less than 100 kilometers from London to Oxford, one
of England's most beautiful cities and home to its oldest
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university. Here you can walk around the fantastic old

buildings of colleges like Christ Church and Magdalen, many
of them more than five hundred years old. Oxford also has
England's oldest museum, the Ashmolean, as well as parks,
gardens and lovely river walks.
Oxford is near a famous area of England called the
Cotswolds. Close to the green hills there are beautiful villages,
with pretty houses made from gold-coloured stone and fine old
churches. Many visitors come to this area, and there are tourist
shops and afternoon tea rooms in a lot of bigger villages.
Oxford is not very far from Stratford-upon-Avon, famous
as the home town of William Shakespeare, the great writer. In
this pretty river town, you can visit Shakespeare's old house
and also see a play at the theatre of the Royal Shakespeare
Company.
At Warwick, just a few kilometers away, is one of the
greatest medieval castles in England. With its great towers and
walls, dark dungeons and beautiful gardens, Warwick Castle is
one of the most impressive in England.
The University of Cambridge is almost as old as Oxford's,
and the two cities are like each other in many ways. Like
Oxford, Cambridge is a city of old colleges, many from the late
thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. With its gardens,
green spaces and river, Cambridge is a lovely city to walk
around. Two of the most famous places in Cambridge are
King's College, with its beautiful chapel (a small church), and
the Backs, an area of green land around the River Cam from
where you can see many of the colleges.
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Moving north, England's second biggest city is

Birmingham, which was an important center during the
industrial revolution. Today, Birmingham is a very
multicultural city and is home to the National Exhibition
Centre (NEC), where many big shows and events are held.
Many people come to Birmingham to visit its big, modern
shopping center, the Bull Ring, but few tourists spend a lot of
time here.
Further north of Birmingham, Stoke-on-Trent has been
famous since the seventeenth century for its pottery industry -
the industry of making objects such as cups, plates and bowls.
Here you can visit the pottery factories and buy pottery cheaply
from the factory shops.
York is one of the most interesting cities of the north of
England. It was a Roman city, and for many years it was an
important place for religion and politics in England. During
medieval times - the Middle Ages - there was a strong wool
trade in York, and because of this, many other traders came to
live here. The city feels very medieval even today, with its
narrow streets and old walls. Many tourists come to visit the
city and to see York Minster, the city's old cathedral (a large
and important church), with its beautiful windows. York was an
important city when the railways were first built in England,
and now it is home to the National Railway Museum.
Twenty-five kilometers from York is Castle Howard, one
of the best of England's stately homes (big country houses).
Stately homes were built for the most important families of
England, who normally had homes in London too. These
homes were places where the king or queen could visit and
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where important people could have meetings about politics or

government.
Two very exciting cities in the north of England are
Liverpool and Manchester. Liverpool, which is on the sea,
became important in the eighteenth century because of trade
with America. Many immigrants from the West Indies, China
and Ireland arrived in Liverpool when they came to England,
so Liverpool was one of England's first multicultural cities. But
by the 1970s and 1980s, ships were no longer coming to
Liverpool. The city's old buildings stayed empty, and it became
very poor. Since 2004, a lot of money has been spent in
Liverpool, and Albert Dock, where ships used to arrive, is now
an exciting new area with restaurants, museums, shops and art
galleries.
Liverpool was home to The Beatles, and many people
come here to do 'Beatles Tours' and to visit the clubs where the
famous band played or see the homes where John, Paul,
George and Ringo lived. In Liverpool, you can also see some
wonderful art at the Walker Art Gallery or Tate Liverpool, visit
the two cathedrals, or take a boat across the River Mersey and
look back at the famous sights of this great city.
Just fifty kilometers east of Liverpool is another big city,
Manchester. Manchester has some of the most exciting modern
buildings in England. Its cafes, clubs and nightlife make it one
of the best cities in the country for many young people. But
like Liverpool, Manchester had a difficult time in the second
half of the twentieth century. Once the most important city in
the world for cotton, Manchester's old industries were coming
to an end by the 1950s, and many people lost their jobs. But
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new industries began to grow, and at the start of the twenty-

first century, parts of the city were rebuilt, making Manchester
an exciting city once more.
Blackpool is very different from Liverpool and
Manchester. With its long beaches, hotels and piers, Blackpool
is a popular holiday town. Here you can eat fish and chips, go
to amusement arcades and see the coloured lights on Blackpool
Tower.
Some of the most interesting sights of England are in the
far north of the country. Durham Cathedral, almost nine
hundred years old, is here, and also the Angel of the North, the
biggest sculpture in England. The sculpture - of an angel with
very wide wings - was built on an old coal mine by Antony
Gormley, the same artist who made Another Place (see the fact
box opposite). He wanted people to remember that for two
hundred years, mining was one of the biggest industries in this
area.
People pass the Angel of the North as they drive to
Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Like Manchester and Liverpool,
Newcastle is another industrial city that now has museums, art
galleries and an exciting nightlife.
Near Newcastle is the end of Hadrians Wall, parts of
which can be seen very clearly. Today, the border with Scotland
is further north than it was when the Romans built Hadrians
Wall. Just a few kilometers from today's border is another
interesting sight, Holy Island, or Lindisfarne. You cannot get to
the island at high tide - when the sea comes in closest to the
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land - but at other times you can walk or drive across to it and
see the castle that was built here in the sixteenth century.
Back in the south of England, and west of London, there
are more sights and interesting cities to see. Bath, so-called
because of its famous Roman baths, is a lovely little city. The
old Roman baths are some of the best-kept in Europe, and in
the eighteenth century, many rich and important people came
here to 'take the waters'. Big, fine houses were built for them,
and so Bath has many Georgian streets and buildings, with
pretty parks too.
Just a few kilometers further west from Bath, but very
different, is the big, busy city of Bristol. Bristol, once a very
big port, now has a strong electronics industry and is important
in the creative media - film, TV, radio and fashion. It is also the
biggest cultural center in the area, with a busy nightlife. As in
many other cities in England, the old docks - the area where the
ships used to come in - have now been changed into an area for
restaurants, shops and museums. One of the most famous
sights of Bristol is the Clifton Suspension Bridge, which was
made by the great engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunei.
Many visitors to Bristol make the short journey south to
Glastonbury. Here you can visit Glastonbury Abbey, which was
built in the seventh century. Glastonbury is also famous for the
music festival held there most years in June. It is the biggest
music festival in the country.
Stonehenge, east of Glastonbury, is one of the wonders of
the world. The big stone circles here were made between 3000
BC and 1600 BC - they are as old as Egypt's pyramids! One of
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the most interesting things about Stonehenge is that some of

the stones are very heavy - up to forty tones - but they came
from hundreds of kilometers away, in Wales. People believe
they were probably brought and pulled to Stonehenge in simple
boats. But no one is sure how they got to Stonehenge. On the
longest day of the year, the sun rises across the stone circles.
Because of this, many people think the circles were perhaps
some kind of ancient calendar.
In the county of Cornwall, in the far south-west of
England, you can visit the Eden Project. Here you can see
plants and trees from many different places, and the largest
non-wild rainforest in the world.
Brighton, on the south coast, became an important town
in the mid eighteenth century, when people began to enjoy
swimming in the sea. The Prince of Wales (later King George
the Fourth) started to come to Brighton in the 1780s, and in
1815, the Royal Pavilion was built for him. The Royal
Pavilion, which has a strange mixture of Indian and Chinese
building styles, is one of the most interesting buildings in
Brighton today. Like Bath, Brighton has some beautiful
Georgian buildings, but it is a fun town too. Here you can walk
on the pier, beside the sea, or through the Lanes - narrow
streets that were once part of the old fishing village of
Brighton, and which are now busy with shops and restaurants.
North-east of Brighton, on the road to Dover, Canterbury
is a place full of history. It was an important Roman town, and
in AD 602, the first cathedral in England was built here.
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The cathedral was rebuilt in 1070 and continues to be

very important today: the Archbishop of Canterbury is the head
of the Church of England.
As you can see, there are lots of exciting places to visit in
England!
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CHAPTER FIVE
Nature and the Environment
England has some exciting and beautiful cities, and many
interesting sights. But for a lot of people, the best thing about
England is its countryside. Mostly, England is a place of green
hills, but it also has lakes, rivers, a long coastline that is very
different in different parts of the country and, in the north,
mountains. Because there are so many different kinds of
environments in England, there is a lot of wildlife too. Around
the coast you can see seals, sharks, dolphins and otters; and
rabbits, foxes, squirrels and deer are just some of the animals
that move around the countryside freely. Nearly two hundred
and thirty different kinds of birds live in England, and another
two hundred visit for part of the year. There are also many
different kinds of trees, plants and wild flowers growing in the
English countryside.
The weather in England is temperate - almost never very,
very hot, or very, very cold - with lots of rain all year. It is
usually warmest between June and September, but the weather
in any month can be very different from year to year.
England has ten national parks beautiful areas of
countryside where is the special laws keep the land and a
wildlife safe. The biggest of these is the Lake District, in the
north-west of England. The Lake District has the highest
mountains in the country, with sixteen big lakes lying below
them. With its beautiful scenery, the Lake District is not
surprisingly a very popular place for tourists. Most visitors
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come to walk in the mountains, to go on boats on the lakes and

to enjoy the area's pretty stone-built villages. There is also a lot
of wildlife in the Lake District, and it is the only place in the
country where golden eagles - birds of prey - live.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many poets
began to write about the Lake District. The most famous of
these was William Wordsworth, who lived there for sixty years.
The poems and books that he wrote about the Lake District
made many people come and visit the area for the first time.
Another famous writer from the Lake District is Beatrix
Potter, whose children's books about Peter Rabbit and his
friends are famous around the world. Today, a lot of tourists
visit the house near Hawkshead where she wrote many of her
books.
There are four other national parks in the north of
England. The Peak District, the Yorkshire Dales and the
Northumberland National Park are all part of the Pennines, an
area of low mountains in the middle of the north of England.
The Pennine Way, a walking trail 429 kilometers long, goes
along these mountains, which make a kind of natural border
between east and west.
East of the Pennines is the north of England's other
national park, the North York Moors, between York in the south
and Middlesbrough in the north. In all these northern national
parks, you can find deep valleys covered with forests, high
moorland and wonderful caves (natural holes in the rock in the
hillside), and they are great places for walking, cycling or
horse-riding.
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People who have read Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, The

Tenant of Wildfell Hall or any of the other books by Charlotte,
Emily and Anne Bronte, probably feel that they already know
the countryside of the Pennines.
The Bronte sisters lived in Haworth in Yorkshire, and
they describe the windy, heather-covered moorland of this area
in many of their books.
The history of the New Forest, about one hundred
kilometers south-west of London, begins more than nine
hundred years ago.
William the Conqueror wanted this area to be kept for
hunting, and he and his nobles enjoyed looking for deer and
other animals here. Parts of the New Forest, which is now a
national park, have probably not changed very much since
these times. Today, cows walk freely around this area, with its
ancient trees and open land covered with heather. Visitors here
can also see beautiful wild flowers, deer and big birds of prey.
But most famous are the ponies - about three thousand of them
- that live in the New Forest, as they have for many years. You
can often see them walking around the villages of the New
Forest, and you must be ready to stop your car when one
decides to cross the road!
Between Exeter and Plymouth, the national park of
Dartmoor in Devon is the biggest and wildest area of open
countryside in the south of England.
A lot of Dartmoor is moorland and covered in heather, but
Dartmoor is also famous for its many tors - hills with rocks at
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the top. Sheep, cows and ponies walk freely around on

Dartmoor, and many birds live here too.
North of Dartmoor is the national park of Exmoor, a
beautiful area of moorland, forests, valleys and farmland,
which goes across the counties of Somerset and Devon, right
up to the coast. Here you can see otters in nearly every river,
wild red deer, bats and some very special butterflies.
Devon is not only famous for Dartmoor and Exmoor. The
counties of Devon and Cornwall are very popular with tourists
because of their lovely countryside and because they get more
hours of sunlight than anywhere else in England. Away from
the coast, the green fields are full of wild flowers in the
summer, and narrow little roads with tall hedges at the side go
from one pretty village to the next. By the sea, there are golden
beaches and little rocky coves, and on the north coast, the big
waves in places like Newquay make surfing a very popular
sport. Off the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, you can see
basking sharks and porpoises, and on Lundy Island there are
puffins in April and May.
Another beautiful area to visit in this part of England are
the Scilly Isles, about one hundred small islands forty-five
kilometers away from Land's End, in England's far south-west
corner. Each island is very different, and people live on only
five of them.
Along England's south coast, big white cliffs - large rocks
next to the sea - look out onto the English Channel. The rocks
in the cliffs on part of this coast, which is called the Jurassic
Coast and goes from East Devon to Dorset, are one hundred
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and eighty five million years old. Here you can easily find
wonderful fossils - rocks with the shape of animals and plants
from ancient times. You can see lots of fossils here because of
erosion - the rock is very soft, and every day the sea breaks bits
of the rock away from the cliffs. Erosion has made parts of this
coast very beautiful: the perfect little cove at Lulworth in
Dorset and the famous arch of Durdle Door were both made by
erosion.
England's newest national park is the South Downs,
which comes down to the sea near Brighton. You can walk
through the beautiful green hills of the South Downs on the
South Downs Way, a special walking trail which ends at the
enormous white cliffs of Beachy Head on the south coast.
Most of the North Sea coast of England (on the east side
of the country) is very flat and sandy, with a lot of saltmarsh -
wet, muddy areas with grass growing on them. There are many
sea birds here and also, at Blakeney Point in Norfolk, several
hundred seals. This is the best place in England to see seals,
and many people take special boat trips to visit them.
The national park of the Norfolk Broads is also in this
area. Here, three rivers go across flat land to the sea, and are so
wide in places, they are almost like lakes. Many people like to
visit this area by boat or by bike, enjoying the wonderful
birdlife.
England has a lot of beautiful countryside, but there are
many problems for the environment. Factories, vehicles and
modern farming can make the air, rivers and the sea dirty, and
this is bad for plants and wildlife. Many animals also lose their
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homes when forests are cut down or land is taken for building
houses on. People believe that global warming (the Earth
getting hotter because of dangerous gases in the air) is bringing
new problems to the countryside too. It is because of these
dangers to the environment that the national parks of England
were made, and there are many organizations that work to keep
wildlife and the English countryside safe. The UK government
is also working with governments from other countries to try to
find ways to fight global warming. English people hope that
they, and the tourists who come to their country, will always be
able to enjoy the wonderful natural environment.
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CHAPTER SIX
Daily Life
For most English teenagers, daily life is mainly about
school. Education is free for all children aged five to sixteen. It
is also compulsory - everyone must have an education. As well
as state schools, which are run by the government, there are
also independent schools, which families have to pay for.
About six percent of children in England go to independent
schools. Some families also home-school: they teach their
children at home.
Children start their compulsory education in primary
school when they are four or five years old, and at age eleven,
they move to secondary school. The school year is from
September to July, with two-week holidays at Christmas and in
the spring, and a longer six-week holiday in the summer.
Between each of these holidays, there is a one-week break
called Half Term, so the school year has got three terms.
Most state schools follow the national curriculum, which
tells teachers what subjects to teach. At the end of Year 11,
when students are about sixteen, they take exams called GCSEs
in many different subjects. Some of these subjects, such as
math's and English, are compulsory, but students can also
choose some subjects. After their exams, some students leave
education, and others go to technical colleges, where they learn
how to do the jobs they are interested in. Others stay at school
and study for one or two more years to do exams called AS-
levels and A-levels, this time in only three or four subjects.
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Some students who do well in their A-levels will go on to study

at university for another three to six years.
Most jobs in England today are in the service industry - in
places like hotels, restaurants, shops, computer companies and
banks. Many English people work very hard. The working day
is usually from nine o'clock until five o'clock, with an hour at
lunchtime, five days a week, but often people work much
longer hours.
It can be very difficult for young people to find a job,
even if they have studied at university. Some do more training,
learning how to do new things. Others take unpaid work, so
they can get experience.
In the evenings and at the weekends, many English
people enjoy watching or playing sport, watching TV, playing
computer games, or reading books or newspapers. Sometimes
they go out to the cinema or to a restaurant, or to see their
favourite band play music. Sometimes they just go shopping or
spend time with their friends. Children and teenagers often go
to weekly clubs, for example Scouts, martial arts, dance, drama
or music. Most teenagers also have a mobile phone, so that
they can talk to their friends or send them text messages, and
an MP3 player for listening to music.
There are lots of things to do at the weekends and on
holidays in England. Many families go out together to
museums, beaches or theme parks, or for walks or cycle rides
in the countryside. People also invite friends to their houses for
meals, a cup of tea, or to watch a sports match on TV.
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Life in England is very different if you live in the city or

in the countryside. In the city, public transport is usually very
good, and there are many buses and trains. London also has an
underground train system, called the Tube, and you can travel
around Manchester by tram. But in the countryside, people
often have to walk and drive a lot.
Most people who live in cities have homes in the suburbs
- the areas around a city. Cities often also have big estates.
These are places built mainly for people to live in, with lots of
houses or flats, and usually some shops and a park. There are
lots of different kinds of homes for people to live in in
England. Some houses are more than six hundred years old,
others are very modern; some people live in houses with
several different rooms and a garden, others live in small
apartments called flats. In the past, people in England used to
buy their own homes, but houses and flats have now become
very expensive. For young people with little money, it is now
very difficult to buy a home, and more people now rent: they
pay money to someone to live in their house or flat.
Most English people usually eat at home because eating
out - eating in a restaurant or cafe - is expensive. Breakfast is
often toast or cereal, and while some people have a big meal at
midday, others just have a sandwich for lunch and then eat their
main meal in the evening. This meal can be called supper,
dinner or tea. But for some families, 'tea is a cup of tea with a
biscuit or a piece of cake!
Many people now buy their food and all the other
shopping they need from big supermarkets, which are on the
outside of almost every town and city. These supermarkets are
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often open all day and in the evening, and some now stay open
all night too. Other shops usually open at nine o'clock and close
at half-past five or six, with shorter opening hours on Sundays.
Life in England is busier than ever today. Travel around
any English city at rush hour - when people are going to or
from work - and it seems that no one has time for anything. But
over a morning coffee or the important afternoon cup of tea,
most English people can always find the time to talk about
sport or the weather, or think of something to laugh about.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
Sports
Sport is very important in England, and people enjoy
going to big sports events or watching them on TV and playing
sport in their free time. Some of the most popular world sports
- football, rugby, cricket, golf and tennis - first started in
England, and people from all around the world come here for
some of its great sports events.
In 2012, the Olympics were held in England, and millions
of people from around the world came to London to watch the
many different sports of the Olympics and the Paralympics.
New sports stadiums were built, including the main Olympic
stadium, a basketball arena and a velopark, for cycling. It was
the first time the Olympics had come to England since 1948
and was a very exciting year for the country.
The most popular sport in England is football, and there
are professional matches every week from August until May.
Many thousands of people also play in parks, at local clubs,
and at schools or universities. Football has been played in
England for hundreds of years, and the best football teams, for
example Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal,
are famous around the world. The most important day in
England's football calendar is the Football Association (FA)
Cup Final day in May at London's Wembley Stadium.
Many people believe that England's best ever footballer
was Bobby Charlton, who started playing for Manchester
United in 1953 and scored 249 goals over the next twenty
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years. In 1958, Charlton was in an aeroplane with the

Manchester United team when it crashed, killing eight players.
Bobby Charlton was not killed in the crash, and he went on to
play in the 1966 World Cup, which England won. It was the
first and only time that England has won the World Cup.
Cricket was first played in England in the sixteenth
century, and by the eighteenth century, it had become the
country's national sport. Every summer, teams from other
countries play five-day Test matches against the English
national team. Cricket is also played on village greens - small
fields in villages - around the country in the summer months.
Because cricket matches are so long, a new kind of match
called the Twenty20 was introduced in 2003. Twenty20
matches are only three hours long, so people can watch them in
one day.
Rugby is another sport that began in England, and it is
named after the school where it was first played Rugby School
in Warwickshire. Rugby is like football, but players can hold
the ball and tackle each other pull each other to the ground - to
get the ball. Rugby is not as popular as football, but after
England won the World Cup in 2003, more people began to
watch and play the sport. In England, there are two kinds of
rugby, each very different: Rugby League and Rugby Union.
For two weeks around the end of Traditionally, when
people June, England becomes tennis-mad!
This is the time of the Wimbledon they eat strawberries
and cream. Championships, the most famous tennis tournament
in the world. Few people watch tennis on TV for the rest of the
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year, but during Wimbledon, matches are shown on TV every

afternoon and evening.
England's most famous tennis player was Fred Perry, who
won the Wimbledon Championship every year for three years,
from 1934 to 1936. Since that time, no English player has won
the Men's Championship.
Horse-racing is another very popular sport in England.
There are races every day of the year, and people enjoy making
bets on which horse will win. The Derby at Epsom, which
continues to be held today, was the first derby ever, and derbies
- races on flat ground for three-year-old horses - are now held
around the world. Other important dates in horseracing are the
Grand National in Liverpool in April - one of the most difficult
horse races in the world - and Royal Ascot, five days of horse
racing in Berkshire in June. The Queen always goes to Ascot,
so it is an important event in England, and visitors wear their
best clothes and hats.
Another important day for sport in England is the London
Marathon in April. More than thirty thousand people run in the
London Marathon, which has been held since 1981. The fastest
people finish the forty-two kilometer run in just over two
hours, but for many runners the most important thing is making
money for charity.
Watersports are popular in England, and many people,
especially on the south coast, enjoy sailing. There are good
waves for surfing at many of the beaches in the south-west, and
canoeing is also popular on England's many rivers and canals.
Two of England's most famous sportspeople do a watersport -
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Steve Redgrave, who won gold medals for rowing at every

Olympic Games between 1984 and 2000, and Ellen MacArthur,
who broke the world record for sailing around the world alone
in the fastest time on 7th February 2005.
Golf is also a very popular sport for English people.
There are many golf courses in England, and every July the
Open Championship, one of the four biggest tournaments in the
world, is held in England or Scotland.
Motor-racing is also well-liked, and many people go to a
course called Silverstone in Northamptonshire every year to
watch the British Grand Prix.
At school, children play football, rugby, netball and
cricket, and do athletics in the summer. There are public
swimming pools and gyms in most towns, and many people
also enjoy cycling and walking. Other outdoor activities like
mountaineering - climbing and walking in the hills and
mountains - are also very popular in England.
English people love sport. For some time, they have not
won many big events in the sports that first came from their
country many years before. But sport continues to be a very
important part of life in England.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
Entertainment
England is famous around the world for its great culture
and entertainment. Some of the worlds greatest writers, best
films, and most famous actors and directors have come from
England, and there are several hundred theatres and concert
halls showing wonderful plays, music and dance.
Literature is a very important part of England's history,
and all around the country you can visit the homes of some of
the many great English writers. The most famous of these is, of
course, William Shakespeare, but many others have written
great works of literature too. In the late seventeenth century,
there were some fine poets, for example John Milton, who
wrote Paradise Lost. Novels only began to be widely written in
the eighteenth century, and one of the earliest of these was
Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, which
continues to be very popular today.
The first half of the nineteenth century was famous for
the Romantic poetry of writers like Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Byron, Shelley and Keats. Jane Austen was another great writer
of this time. In books like Emma, Pride and Prejudice and
Persuasion, Austen wrote about how women saw society,
marriage and happiness.
Famous Victorian writers included Charles Dickens, the
Bronte sisters and George Eliot. In Victorian times, people
began for the first time to write literature just for children, and
one of the best-known of these new children's books was Lewis
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Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which continues to

be read by many children even today.
Another writer from around this time whose work is
much-loved now is Arthur Conan Doyle, who was Scottish. He
wrote stories about Sherlock Holmes, a London detective,
between 1880 and 1907. Sherlock Holmes had a brilliant mind
and was able to find the answers to the strangest mysteries. The
stories of these mysteries were told to the reader by Sherlock
Holmes's great friend Dr Watson.
An important English writer at the beginning of the
twentieth century was Thomas Hardy. Tess of the d'Urbervilles,
Far From the Madding Crowd and Hardy's other novels were
often terribly sad stories about people in an imaginary county
called Wessex. Rudyard Kipling was also popular at this time
and from 1910, a new kind of 'modernist' literature became
important. One of the first modernist writers was Joseph
Conrad, who was Polish, but lived in England, and between the
two wars there was a lot of other new literature, from writers
like Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh and DH Lawrence.
After the Second World War, two of England's most
important writers were George Orwell, who wrote Nineteen
Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, and Agatha Christie, who wrote
sixty-six detective novels, including the adventures of Miss
Marple and Hercule Poirot. Modern fantasy literature - writing
about magic, monsters and other imaginary things - became
popular at this time too, when The Lord of the Rings, by JRR
Tolkien, was published in 1949.
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Two of the most famous writers of the last fifty years are
children's writers. Roald Dahl, who was born in Wales to
Norwegian parents, wrote books such as Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory and Matilda, many of which also became
great films and theatre shows. JK Rowling's Harry Potter series
- a group of seven fantasy books for children - has sold
hundreds of millions of copies, and people can now read them
in sixty-seven different languages.
Many of these works of literature have become famous
plays, and for many people an important part of any visit to
England is a trip to the theatre. There are several hundred
theatres in England, around the country, but the most famous
are the theatres of the West End in London. In the West End,
there is a theatre on nearly every street, showing the latest
plays and musicals, and many of the best actors from all around
the world come to perform here. Some of the most famous
shows in the West End have been musicals, such as Cats and
Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber, but in
London and around the country, you can also see many
different kinds of shows, including more serious plays, new
works and comedy.
One of the oldest theatres in London is the Old Vic, which
first began to show plays in 1818. England also has the
National Theatre, on London's South Bank near the London
Eye, which opened in 1976. Across the Thames are the Royal
Ballet and the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, and the
English National Opera at the Coliseum, the largest theatre in
London.
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Outside London, England's most famous theatre is the

theatre of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-
Avon, where Shakespeare's plays are performed throughout the
year. In the summer, you can also see Shakespeare's plays at
the Globe Theatre in London, a round theatre with no roof, like
the one where these famous plays were first performed more
than four hundred years ago.
England is important for its music too. George Frideric
Handel, Edward Elgar and Gustav Holst are three of the
country's most famous classical music composers, and at places
like the Royal Festival Hall and the Barbican Centre in
London, you can hear many different kinds of classical music,
played by some of the finest orchestras in the world. There is
also a lot of good classical music outside London: the
Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is one of the best in Europe,
and at many stately homes and castles around the country there
are outdoor concerts in the summer.
But it is for its pop music that England is best known.
Together with the USA, the UK brought rock 'n' roll to the
world in the 1950s, and The Beatles, who became popular in
the 1960s, is one of the most famous bands in the world.
During the 1960s, the Rolling Stones, Cliff Richard and The
Shadows, The Who, The Kinks, The Animals and many other
bands became important in England, and they started to
become famous in the USA too. For a while, the USA began to
follow the UK in music and in fashion.
In the 1970s, music changed. First there was glam rock
from artists like David Bowie and Elton John, who coloured
their hair, and wore strange and wonderful clothes and shoes.
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Then came punk rock - short, fast songs, often with a political
message, sung by bands like the Clash. In the 1980s, world
music, heavy metal (loud, hard music) and indie rock were
popular, and England's dance music culture also began. But in
the late 1990s, some artists turned against the many fashions in
music of the '80s and early '90s, and Britpop arrived - bands
such as Blur, Oasis and Radiohead that followed the British
guitar music of the 1960s and '70s. Several of these bands
became famous around Europe and in the USA.
Today, you can see bands play in clubs in almost every
big city, and there are also music festivals around the country
where people camp and watch music in big fields. The most
famous of these is at Glastonbury.
Art-lovers can find a lot to enjoy in England too. Two of
England's most famous artists were the landscape painters John
Constable and JMW Turner, and many of their pictures can be
seen at the Tate Britain gallery in London. London also has the
Tate Modern, of course, and there are also great exhibitions at
the Royal Academy of Arts, and a lot of Western European art
at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. In the 1990s, a
group of artists called the Young British Artists (YBAs)
became very popular in England. One of the most famous
YBAs was Damien Hirst, who made a lot of art works with
dead animals. Some people love his work, and others hate it!
Most towns in England have a cinema, and watching
films is a very popular activity for English people. England has
made some of the world's greatest films, and some of the most
famous actors and directors are English.
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The film industry only really started in England in the

1930s, when some famous films like The 39 Steps were made.
But it was in the 1950s and 1960s that British cinema became
really important. At this time, Hammer Horror films like The
Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula were made - and Ealing
Comedies like Kind Hearts and Coronets and Whisky Galore.
The first Carry On film was made in 1958, and by 1992, there
were thirty-one. The Carry On films were comedies that made
jokes about English life. They were not thought of as important
films, but were loved by many English people.
The James Bond films were another series that became
very famous in England. The stories were adventures about
James Bond, a secret service agent - someone who worked
secretly for the government, looking for enemies of the
country. The first Bond film, Dr No, was made in 1962, and the
films became famous for their music, Bond's cars and clever
equipment, and for James Bond himself - a character played by
several different actors.
A famous English actor of the 1960s was Julie Andrews,
who appeared in two famous musical films, The Sound of
Music and Mary Poppins. But many people believe that the
greatest actor of the twentieth century was Laurence Olivier.
Olivier, who worked in theatre and film from the 1920s until
the 1980s, made nearly sixty films, including Rebecca and
Wuthering Heights.
Also very famous, but as a director not an actor, was
Alfred Hitchcock. He made many great mystery films in
England and in Hollywood, where he later went to live.
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From the 1990s, romantic comedies like Four Weddings

and a Funeral and Notting Hill were made, and the Merchant
Ivory films of classic novels like Howard's End. Since then,
some of England's most successful films have been Love
Actually, Slumdog Millionaire and the Harry Potter series.
But England's most popular kind of entertainment is
television. Public television first began in England in 1936, and
the British Broadcasting Corporation (the BBC) is the world's
oldest and largest broadcaster Today there are five main
channels in England, and there are also hundreds more
channels on cable and satellite TV. There are hundreds of radio
stations too.
On English TV, there are many different kinds of
programmers, but some of the most popular ones are sitcoms
(situation comedies) - comedies about people in their home or
where they work. One of the most famous of these was Fawlty
Towers, with the actor John Cleese. Many people also enjoy
soap operas - dramas which continue from one programme to
the next, for example Eastenders, Coronation Street,
Emmerdale and Hollyoaks. Another very popular drama series
in England in the 1990s was Inspector Morse, about a detective
in Oxford.
Many people also enjoy reality programmes -
programmes about ordinary people's lives. One of the most
famous of these is Big Brother, a programme in which a group
of people live together in a house and are filmed twenty-four
hours a day. Some of the Big Brother programmes have been
watched by up to six million people in the UK: England has
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great music, art, history and literature, but sometimes people

are most interested in day-to-day life!
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CHAPTER NINE
English Heroes
Who are England's heroes - the important people who will
never be forgotten? One of the greatest must be William
Shakespeare, who wrote many beautiful poems and about
thirty-seven plays, including A Midsummer Night's Dream,
Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Macbeth. The people in his
plays always seem very real, and he wrote about their feelings
and problems in words that continue to sound new and
interesting today.
Another hero of England from the world of literature is
Charles Dickens. Dickens wrote some of the best novels of
Victorian times, including Oliver Twist, David Copperfield,
Bleak House and Little Dorrit. Dickens used his books to show
how terrible life was for poor people in England at the time of
the industrial revolution.
But England has scientific heroes as well as heroes from
the world of literature. One of the greatest of these was Sir
Isaac Newton. Born in Lincolnshire in 1643, Newton studied at
the University of Cambridge. He was able to understand and
explain many things about the world around us for the first
time, and his book Mathematical Principles of Natural
Philosophy was very important in the history of science.
Newton helped people to understand about light and colour,
and he was also the first person to explain gravity - the force
that pulls things towards the ground.
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Charles Darwin also did scientific work in England. He

was born into a rich family, and in 1831 he left England to
travel around the world. Darwin studied the animals and plants
that he saw on his trip, and was interested in the differences
between them. When he came home, he began to work on a
new idea: the theory of evolution. This was the idea that only
the strongest animals and plants lived and reproduced - had
babies or grew seeds. And so, Darwin believed, each kind of
animal and plant was slowly changing. In 1859, Darwin
published his ideas in the book On the Origin of Species.
One very real hero of England was Horatio Nelson, who
was leader of the Royal Navy from 1794 to 1805. Nelson, who
lost one eye and one arm in battle, was a great leader, and with
him, Britain won many battles against France during the
Napoleonic Wars. At the Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson helped to
stop the French from invading Britain, but he was then killed.
A very large statue of him stands forty-six meters high in
Trafalgar Square and is one of London's best-loved sights.
Two other important English seamen were Sir Francis
Drake and Captain Cook. Sir Francis Drake helped to lead
England against the Spanish Armada in 1588, and Captain
Cook was the first European to reach the east coast of
Australia, in 1770.
Winston Churchill, prime minister from 1940 until 1945,
was another English hero for many people during World War
Two. Churchill was a strong leader, and many people believe
that the speeches and radio broadcasts he made during the war
helped the UK to win the war. He was prime minister again
from 1951 to 1955, and when he died in 1965, the Queen gave
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him a state funeral - a special funeral that is normally only for

kings and queens.
Another famous politician was Margaret Thatcher.
Thatcher was prime minister from 1979 to 1990 - longer than
any other person in the twentieth century - and she was also the
first woman prime minister of the UK.
One of England's most famous heroes is not actually real.
Stories about Robin Hood have been popular since the Middle
Ages, and in modern times many films, plays and TV
programmes have been made about him. In these old stories,
Robin Hood is a great fighter and an outlaw - someone who
does not follow the law. Living in Sherwood Forest at a time
when the king of England is a dishonest man, he takes money
from the rich to give it to the poor.
Florence Nightingale was famous for helping people too -
but she was a real person. Florence Nightingale is thought of
by many as the first real nurse. In 1854, during the Crimean
War, she went to work in a hospital for soldiers. She thought
that it was dirty and badly organized, so she quickly started to
make important changes. Because of her, the hospital became
cleaner, the soldiers were given good food and taken care of
better, and soon fewer people were dying. When she came back
to England, Florence Nightingale started the first proper
nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital.
England also has heroes of the stage and screen. One of
the first of these was Charlie Chaplin, a comedy actor and
director who was famous for his many silent films in the years
before films with sound were made. Chaplin's best-known
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character was 'The Tramp', a funny little man with a hat, a

moustache and a stick. Before the end of the First World War,
Chaplin was the most famous film actor in the world.
But probably the greatest stage heroes of England are The
Beatles. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and
Ringo Starr had their first hit, Love Me Do, in 1962, and by
1964, they had become famous around the world. There was
international 'Beatlemania: people screamed and shouted when
the band came on stage, and the world watched everything they
did. The Beatles were the first English band to become
successful in the USA. They made more than two hundred
songs and are the best-selling band in history.
Two more musical heroes of England, famous in a quieter
way, are the composers George Frideric Handel and Sir
Edward Elgar. Handel was German, but came to live in London
in 1712 and became British in 1727. He is one of the greatest
composers in history and is best known for wonderful works
like Water Music and The Messiah, written in 1742. Elgar's
most famous works are the Enigma Variations, written in 1899,
The Dream of Gerontius and the Pomp and Circumstance
Marches.
What about modern-day English heroes? For many
football lovers, David Beckham is a hero. He was captain of
the England football team from 2000 until 2006 and, along
with his wife Victoria, who was once in the band the Spice
Girls, Beckham is a very famous celebrity.
Princess Diana is also, for many people, an English hero.
Diana was the first wife of Charles, the Prince of Wales, and
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when they married in 1981, people believed that she would one
day be the queen. But they were not happy together, and in
1996 Charles and Diana ended their marriage. A year later,
Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris. Many people loved
her for her work with international charities and because she
showed great kindness to children, ill people and those with
difficult lives. When she died, thousands of people brought
flowers to her London home, and two-and-a-half billion people
watched her funeral on TV.
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CHAPTER TEN
Looking Forward
All through England's history, small inventions - new
things that people make - have brought big changes to peoples
lives. When William Caxton made the first English printing
press in 1476, the country changed in many ways. Now people
could get more books, more cheaply, and so they could get
information about lots of different things. Because of this,
information also became more standardized: it was written
down in the same way each time, which was important in areas
like science. The printing press changed the English language
too. At that time, people in different parts of the country used
very different words, but William Caxton only printed books in
standardized English.
The spinning Jenny, invented in 1764 by James
Hargreaves, brought more important changes to England. With
the spinning Jenny, people working in their homes in England
could spin cotton more quickly and so make much more. Other
machines followed, and when steam power was introduced,
cloth making became a proper industry. Cloth-makers did not
work at home anymore; they used big machines in factories in
the cities.
This was the beginning of the industrial revolution, and in
twenty- first century England, people are in the middle of
another revolution, or great change, again started by several
small inventions.
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One of the most important of these was the invention by

the Englishman Tim Berners-Lee, in 1990, of the World Wide
Web. The World Wide Web has made it easier than ever for
people to get information. Its invention is part of the digital
revolution, which has given us mobile phones, computers, MP3
players, digital TV and much, much more.
The digital revolution is changing many things about life
in England. We can now talk on the telephone almost
anywhere, send messages quickly around the world and see
people who are thousands of kilometers away through our
computers. Because of this, people can study or work from
home more easily, and work with people in different countries.
We can shop and meet people on the Internet, read books on
our computers and watch hundreds of different TV channels.
And the machines we use every day, like radios, washing
machines and cameras, are becoming better and cheaper all the
time.
But the digital revolution is also bringing new problems.
Many people feel that modern technology makes life busier and
sometimes more difficult. We can work wherever we are now,
so for some people there is less time to think or to relax. Is it
good for children to play computer games and watch TV so
much? And are we forgetting how to meet people and make
real friends because we talk to people through computers so
much now?
These are all difficult questions for England's future, and
there are other questions we are trying to answer now too. For
a long time, we have known that there are big environmental
problems in the world. Factories, cars, and burning coal, oil or
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gas for fuel all make our air dirty, giving us global warming. So
now we need to find ways to help the environment.
Many English homes and companies are already getting
their electricity from solar (sun) or wind power, and the
government is giving money to people who use these
renewable energies - ones that can be used again and again. In
the future, we will probably use less and less coal, oil and gas.
Many English people have been recycling more and more of
their rubbish, and by 2011, they were recycling forty percent of
their rubbish. In the future, many people also believe that we
will use electric cars more and other energy-saving
technologies.
The digital and environmental revolutions are changing
England. England in 2100 will be a very different place to the
England we now know. Will England have a king or queen?
Will there continue to be big differences between rich and poor
people? How many different languages will people speak? And
will England have won the Football World Cup again? We
cannot know. But we can probably hope that people will
continue to watch Shakespeare's plays, climb the mountains of
the Lake District and visit the sights of London. And perhaps
they will still say that England is a wonderful, exciting place.

- THE END -
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