Portal:United Kingdom
The United Kingdom Portal
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The UK includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and most of the smaller islands within the British Isles, making up a total area of 94,354 square miles (244,376 km2). Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, and the Irish Sea. The United Kingdom had an estimated population of over 68.2 million people in 2023. The capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom is London, whose wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 14.9 million. The cities of Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast are the national capitals of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, respectively.
The lands of the UK have been inhabited continuously since the Neolithic. In AD 43, the Roman conquest of Britain began; the Roman departure was followed by Anglo-Saxon settlement. In 1066, the Normans conquered England. With the end of the Wars of the Roses, the English state stabilised and began to grow in power, resulting by the 16th century in the annexation of Wales, the domination of Scotland, and the establishment of the British Empire. Over the course of the 17th century, the role of the British monarchy was reduced, particularly as a result of the English Civil War. In 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland united under the Treaty of Union to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Acts of Union 1800 incorporated the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Most of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922 as the Irish Free State, and the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 created the present United Kingdom.
The UK became the first industrialised country and was the world's foremost power for the majority of the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly during the "Pax Britannica" between 1815 and 1914. The British Empire was the leading economic power for most of the 19th century, a position supported by its agricultural prosperity, its role as a dominant trading nation, a massive industrial capacity, significant technological achievements, and the rise of 19th-century London as the world's principal financial centre. At its height in the 1920s, the British Empire encompassed almost a quarter of the world's landmass and population, and was the largest empire in history. However, its involvement in the First World War and the Second World War damaged Britain's economic power and a global wave of decolonisation led to the independence of most British colonies. (Full article...)
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The Lucy poems are a series of five poems composed by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth between 1798 and 1801. All but one were first published in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1800, a collaboration between Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge that was both Wordsworth’s first major publication and a milestone in the early English Romantic movement. In the series, Wordsworth sought to write unaffected English verse infused with abstract ideals of beauty, nature, love, longing and death. Although they individually deal with a variety of themes, as a series they focus on the poet's longing for the company of his friend Coleridge, who had stayed in England, and on his increasing impatience with his sister Dorothy, who had travelled with him abroad. Wordsworth channeled his frustrations into an examination of unrequited love for the idealised character of Lucy, an English girl who has died young. The idea of her death weighs heavily on the poet throughout the series, imbuing it with a melancholic, elegiac tone. Whether Lucy was based on a real woman or was a figment of the poet's imagination has long been a matter of debate among scholars. The "Lucy poems" consist of "Strange fits of passion have I known", "She dwelt among the untrodden ways", "I travelled among unknown men", "Three years she grew in sun and shower", and "A slumber did my spirit seal". (Full article...)
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Vivien Leigh was an English theatre and film actress. Although her film appearances were relatively few, she won two Academy Awards playing "Southern belles", Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, a role she had also played in London's West End. She was a prolific stage performer, frequently in collaboration with her husband, Laurence Olivier, who directed her in several of her roles. During her thirty-year stage career, she played parts that ranged from the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth. Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that it sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress, but ill health proved to be her greatest obstacle. Affected by bipolar disorder for most of her adult life, she gained a reputation for being difficult, and her career went through periods of decline. She was further weakened by recurrent bouts of tuberculosis, which was first diagnosed in the mid-1940s. She and Olivier divorced in 1960, and Leigh worked sporadically in film and theatre until her death from tuberculosis. (Full article...)
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Did you know -
- ... that Phil Fletcher as Hacker T. Dog caused Lauren Layfield to make the "most famous snort" in the United Kingdom in 2016?
- ... that Sting wrote "We Work the Black Seam" because he felt that "the case for coal was never put to the nation" during the 1984–85 British miners' strike, which began 40 years ago today?
- ... that the 1st Armoured Division of the British Army chose a white rhinoceros on a black oval as their insignia?
- ... that Youlgreave in Derbyshire is one of only a few villages in the United Kingdom to be supplied by its own private waterworks?
- ... that in Crippled, author Frances Ryan describes a disabled British woman who was unable to afford heating or her specialist meals due to an austerity programme that began in 2010?
- ... that by losing her constituency of South West Norfolk in 2024, Liz Truss became the first former UK prime minister since 1935 to lose their seat?
In the news
- 19 December 2024 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Military aids during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, United Kingdom and the Russian invasion of Ukraine
- 19 December 2024 – Georgia–United Kingdom relations, Georgia–United States relations, 2024 Georgian post-election protests
- The United Kingdom and the United States impose sanctions on Georgian officials, including Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri, in response to alleged violent crackdowns on pro-European protests. (EFE)
- 18 December 2024 – Legal affairs of the Tate brothers
- The Westminster Magistrates' Court rules that British police may seize £2.2 million (US$2.5 million) from influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan for allegedly failing to pay taxes on profits from their online ventures. (DW)
- 15 December 2024 – Free trade agreements of the United Kingdom
- The United Kingdom joins the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, becoming the 12th member and the first European member. (Reuters)
- 11 December 2024 – 2024 United Kingdom farmers' protests
- Hundreds of tractors block Whitehall in protest of Labour government changes to agricultural inheritance tax. (The Independent)
- 7 December 2024 – 2024–25 European windstorm season
- Two people are killed by falling trees in England and more than 1.5 million people experience power outages in Ireland and the United Kingdom as Storm Darragh hits the British Isles. (BBC News) (Sky News)
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