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Bristol

Politics and government

Bristol's constituencies in the House of Commons cross the borders with neighbouring authorities, and the city is divided into Bristol West, East, South and North-west and Kingswood. Northavon also covers some of the suburbs, but none of the administrative county. At the next General Election, the boundaries will be changed to coincide with the county boundary. Kingswood will no longer cover any of the county, and a new Filton and Bradley Stoke constituency will include the suburbs in South Gloucestershire. There are four Labour and one Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament.

Bristol has a tradition of local political activism, and has been home to many important political figures. Tony Benn, a veteran left-wing politician, was Member of Parliament (MP) for Bristol South East from 1950 to 1983. Edmund Burke, MP for the Bristol constituency for six years from 1774, famously insisted that he was a Member of Parliament first, rather than a representative of his constituents' interests. In 1963, there was a boycott of the city's buses after the Bristol Omnibus Co. refused to employ black drivers and conductors. The boycott is known to have influenced the creation of the UK's Race Relations Act in 1965. The women's rights campaigner Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (1867-1954) was born in Bristol. The city was the scene of the first of the 1980s riots or uprisings. In St. Paul's, a number of largely African-Caribbean people rose up against racism, police harassment and mounting disatifisfaction with their social and economic circumstances before similar disturbances followed across the UK. Local support of fair trade issues was recognised in 2005 when Bristol was granted Fairtrade City status.

Bristol is unusual in having been a city with county status since medieval times. The county was expanded to include suburbs such as Clifton in 1835, and it was named a county borough in 1889, when the term was first introduced. However, on 1 April 1974, it became a local government district of the short-lived county of Avon. On 1 April 1996, it once again regained its independence and county status, when the county of Avon was abolished and Bristol became a Unitary Authority.

Demographics

In 2005 the Office for National Statistics estimated Bristol's population at 398,300, making it the 47th-largest ceremonial county in England. Using Census 2001 data the ONS estimated the population of the contiguous built-up area to be 441,556, and that of the metropolitan area to be 551,066. This makes the city England's sixth most populous city, and ninth most populous metropolitan area. At 3,599 inhabitants per square kilometre (9,321 /sq mi) it has the seventh-highest population density of any English district.

According to 2005 estimates, 89.3% of the population were described as white, 3.9% as Asian or Asian British, 2.8% as black or black British, 2.2% as mixed race, 1.2% as Chinese and 0.6% other. National averages for England were 89.1%, 5.3%, 2.7%, 1.6%, 0.7% and 0.6% for the same groups. 60% of Bristol's population registered their religion as Christianity, and 25% as not religious in the 2001 census, compared with 72% and 15% nationally. 2% of the population follow Islam (3% nationally), with no other religion above one percent. Bristol had the ninth highest proportion of people refer to their religion in the last census as 'Jedi'.

Physical geography

Bristol is in a limestone area, which runs from the Mendip Hills to the south and the Cotswolds to the north east. The rivers Avon and Frome cut through this limestone to the underlying clays, creating Bristol's characteristic hilly landscape. The Avon flows from Bath in the east, through flood plains and areas which were marshy before the growth of the city. To the west the Avon has cut through the limestone to form the Avon Gorge, partly aided by glacial meltwater after the last ice age. The gorge aided in the protection of Bristol Harbour, and has been quarried for stone to build the city. The land surrounding the gorge has been protected from development, as The Downs and Leigh Woods. The gorge and estuary of the Avon form the county's boundary with North Somerset, and the river flows into the Bristol Channel at Avonmouth at the mouth of the River Severn. There is another gorge in the city, in the Blaise Castle estate to the north.

Situated in the south of the country, Bristol is one of the warmest cities in the UK, with a mean annual temperature of 10.2-12 °C (50-54°F). It is also amongst the sunniest, with 1541-1885 hours sunshine per year. The city is partially sheltered by Exmoor and the Mendip Hills, but exposed from the Bristol Channel, and annual rainfall is similar to the national average, at 741-1,060 mm (29.2-41.7 in).

Education, science and technology

Bristol is home to two major institutions of higher education: the University of Bristol, a "redbrick" chartered in 1909, and the University of the West of England, formerly Bristol Polytechnic, which gained university status in 1992. The city also has two dedicated further education institutions, City of Bristol College and Filton College, and three theological colleges, Trinity College, Bristol, Wesley College, Bristol & Bristol Baptist College. The city has 129 infant, junior and primary schools, 17 secondary schools, and three city learning centres. It has the country's second highest concentration of independent school places, after an exclusive corner of north London. The independent schools in the city include Clifton College, Colston's School, Clifton High School, Badminton School, Bristol Cathedral School, Bristol Grammar School, Redland High School, Queen Elizabeth's Hospital (the only all-boys school) and Red Maids' School, which is the oldest girls' school in England and was founded in 1634 by John Whitson. The division between state and independent education has led to the city being described as "among the most divided cities in the country" and an example of what Anthony Seldon called "educational apartheid".

In 2005 the Chancellor of the Exchequer recognised Bristol's ties to science and technology by naming it one of three "science cities", and promising funding for further development of science in the city, with a £300 million "Science Park" planned at Emerson's Green. As well as research at the two universities and Southmead Hospital, science education is important in the city, with At-Bristol, Bristol Zoo, Bristol Festival of Nature and the Create Centre being prominent local institutions involved in science communication. The city has a history of scientific achievement, including Sir Humphry Davy, the 19th century scientist who worked in Hotwells and discovered laughing gas. Bishopston has given the world two Nobel Prize winning physicists: Paul Dirac for crucial contributions to quantum mechanics in 1933, and Cecil Frank Powell, for a photographic method of studying nuclear processes and associated discoveries in 1950. The city was birth place of Colin Pillinger, planetary scientist behind the Beagle 2 Mars lander project, and is home to Adam Hart-Davis, presenter of various science related television programmes, and the psychologists Susan Blackmore and Richard Gregory.

Transport

There are two principal railway stations in Bristol. Bristol Parkway is located to the north of the city and Bristol Temple Meads located in the centre. Both stations offer direct services to many UK destinations. Principal operators are First Great Western and CrossCountry. There is also a limited service to London Waterloo from Bristol Temple Meads, operated by South West Trains. The main service to London is by First Great Western to Paddington station.

There are scheduled coach links to most major UK cities. The city is connected by road on an east-west axis from London to Wales by the M4 motorway, and on a north-southwest axis from Birmingham to Exeter by the M5 motorway. Also within the county is the M49 motorway, a shortcut between the M5 in the south and M4 Severn Crossing in the west. The M32 motorway is a spur from the M4 to the city centre. The city is also served by its own airport, Bristol International (BRS), at Lulsgate, which has seen substantial investments in its runway, terminal and other facilities since 2001.

Public transport in the city consists largely of its bus network, provided by First Group, formerly the Bristol Omnibus Company. Buses in the city have been widely criticised for being unreliable and expensive, and in 2005 First was fined for delays and safety violations. Use of private cars in Bristol is high, and the city suffers from congestion, which costs an estimated £350 million per year. Bristol is a motorcycle friendly city. The city recognises that motorcycle use eases congestion and encourages this allow motorcycles to use most of the city's bus lanes, as well as providing secure free parking. Since 2000 the city council has included a light rail system in its Local Transport Plan, but has so far been unable to fund the project. The city was offered European Union funding for the system, but the Department for Transport did not provide the required additional funding. As well as support for public transport, there are several road building schemes supported by the local council, including re-routing and improving the South Bristol Ring Road. There are also three park and ride sites serving the city, supported by the local council. The central part of the city has water-based transport, operated as the Bristol Ferry Boat, which provides both leisure and commuter services on the harbour.

Bristol was never well served by suburban railways, though the Severn Beach Line to Avonmouth and Severn Beach survived the Beeching Axe and is still in operation. The Portishead Railway was closed to passengers under the Beeching Axe, but was relaid in 2000-2002 as far as the Royal Portbury Dock with a Strategic Rail Authority rail-freight grant. Plans to relay a further three miles of track to Portishead, a largely dormitory town with only one connecting road, have been discussed but there is insufficient funding to rebuild stations.

Despite being hilly, Bristol is one of the prominent cycling cities of England, and is home to the national cycle campaigning group Sustrans. It has a number of urban cycle routes, as well as links to National Cycle Network routes to Bath and London, to Gloucester and Wales, and to the south-western peninsula of England. Cycling has grown rapidly in the city, with a 21% increase in journeys between 2001 and 2005.

Twin cities

Bristol was amongst the first cities to adopt the idea of town twinning. In 1947 it was twinned with Bordeaux and Hannover, the first post-war twinning of British and German cities. It is twinned with:

United Kingdom

Sport

The Scottish football league system is much smaller, with just two national leagues: the Scottish Premier League (SPL) and the Scottish Football League which has three divisions. There are, however, other regional leagues that are not connected to the national system, most notably the Highland Football League. One English club, Berwick Rangers, plays in the Scottish system. Scotland is home to world-renowned football clubs such as Rangers and Celtic. Scottish teams that have been successful in European Competitions include Celtic (European Cup in 1967), Rangers (European Cup Winners Cup 1972) and Aberdeen (European Cup Winners Cup and European Super Cup in 1983).

The Welsh football league system includes the League of Wales and regional leagues. League of Wales club The New Saints play their home matches on the English side of the border in Oswestry. The Welsh clubs of Cardiff City, Colwyn Bay, Merthyr Tydfil, Newport County, Swansea City and Wrexham play in the English system. Cardiff's 73,000 seater Millennium Stadium is the principal sporting stadium of Wales.

The Northern Irish football league system includes the Irish Football League. One Northern Irish club, Derry City, plays their football outside of the UK in the Republic of Ireland football league system.

Both forms of rugby are national sports. Rugby League originates from and is generally played in the Northern England, whilst Rugby Union is played predominantly in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and Southern England. Though supposedly originating from the actions of William Webb Ellis at the School at Rugby, it is now considered the national sport of Wales. In rugby league the UK has been represented by a single 'Great Britain' team but this will change for the 2008 Rugby League World Cup in which Scotland, England and Ireland will compete as separate nations.[125] This bring it into line with Rugby Union in which England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland (which consists of players from Ireland and Northern Ireland) already compete in international competition. However, every four years a British and Irish Lions team tours Australia, New Zealand or South Africa, composed of players selected from all the Home nations.

There is no UK-wide team in Cricket. The game was invented in England and the England Cricket Team, technically the England and Wales team, is the only national team in the UK with Test status. Irish and Scottish players have played for England because neither Scotland nor Ireland have Test status and only play in One Day Internationals. As of 2006, teams representing Scotland, England (and Wales), and Ireland (including Northern Ireland) compete at the One-Day International level. England and Wales has a professional league championship in which County teams compete.

The game of tennis first originated from the City of Birmingham between 1859 and 1865. The Wimbledon Championships are international tennis events held in Wimbledon in south London every summer and are regarded as the most prestigious event of the global tennis calendar.

Thoroughbred racing is popular throughout the UK. It originated under Charles II of England as the "Sport of Kings" and is a royal pastime to this day. World-famous horse races include the Grand National, the Epsom Derby and Royal Ascot. The town of Newmarket is considered the centre of English racing, largely due to the famous Newmarket Racecourse.

The UK has proved successful in the international sporting arena in rowing. It is widely considered that the sport's most successful rower is Steven Redgrave who won five gold medals and one bronze medal at five consecutive Olympic Games as well as numerous wins at the World Rowing Championships and Henley Royal Regatta.

Golf is one of the most popular participation sports played in the UK, with St Andrews in Scotland being the sport's home course.

Shinty (or camanachd) (A sport derived from the same root as the Irish hurling and similar to bandy) is popular in the Scottish Highlands, sometimes attracting crowds numbering thousands in the most sparsely populated region of the UK.

The country is closely associated with motorsport. Many teams and drivers in Formula One (F1) are based in the UK and drivers from Britain have won more world titles than any other country. The country hosts legs of the F1 and World Rally Championship and has its own Touring Car Racing championship, the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC). The British Grand Prix takes place at Silverstone each July.

Culture

The origins of the UK as a political union of formerly independent countries has resulted in the preservation of distinctive cultures in each of the home nations.

For details, see articles on:Culture of England, Culture of Scotland, Culture of Wales, Culture of Northern Ireland.

The United Kingdom has been influential in the development of cinema, with the Ealing Studios claiming to be the oldest studios in the world. Despite a history of important and successful productions, the industry is characterised by an ongoing debate about its identity, and the influences of American and European cinema. Famous films include the Harry Potter and Ian Fleming's James Bond series which, although now made by American studios, used British source materials, locations, actors and filming crew.

The English playwright and poet William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time.[126][127][128]

Among the earliest English writers are Geoffrey of Monmouth (12th century) , Geoffrey Chaucer (14th century) , and Thomas Malory (15th century). In the 18th century, Samuel Richardson is often credited with inventing the modern novel. In the 19th century, there followed further innovation by Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, the social campaigner Charles Dickens, the naturalist Thomas Hardy, the visionary poet William Blake and romantic poet William Wordsworth. Twentieth century writers include the science fiction novelist H. G. Wells, the controversial D. H. Lawrence, the modernist Virginia Woolf, the prophetic novelist George Orwell and the poet John Betjeman. Most recently, the children's fantasy Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling has recalled the popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Scotland's contribution includes the detective writer Arthur Conan Doyle, romantic literature by Sir Walter Scott, the epic adventures of Robert Louis Stevenson and the celebrated poet Robert Burns. More recently, the modernist and nationalist Hugh MacDiarmid and Neil M. Gunn contributed to the Scottish Renaissance. A more grim outlook is found in Ian Rankin's stories and the psychological horror-comedy of Iain Banks. Scotland's capital, Edinburgh, is UNESCO's first worldwide city of literature.

In the early medieval period, Welsh writers composed the Mabinogion. In modern times, the poets R.S. Thomas and Dylan Thomas have brought Welsh culture to an international audience.

Authors from other nationalities, particularly from Ireland, or from Commonwealth countries, have lived and worked in the UK. Significant examples through the centuries include Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and more recently British authors born abroad such as Kazuo Ishiguro and Sir Salman Rushdie.

In theatre, Shakespeare's contemporaries Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson added depth. More recently Alan Ayckbourn, Harold Pinter, Michael Frayn, Tom Stoppard and David Edgar have combined elements of surrealism, realism and radicalism.

The prominence of the English language gives the UK media a widespread international dimension.

The BBC is the UK's publicly funded radio, television and internet broadcasting corporation, and is the oldest and largest broadcaster in the world. It operates several television channels and radio stations in both the UK and abroad. The BBC's international television news service, BBC World, is broadcast throughout the world and the BBC World Service radio network is broadcast in thirty-three languages globally, as well as services in the national language of Wales on BBC Radio Cymru and programmes in Scottish Gaelic in Scotland and Irish in Northern Ireland.

The domestic services of the BBC are funded by the television licence, a legal requirement for any British household with a television receiver that is in use to receive broadcasts, regardless of whether or not the householders watch BBC channels. Households which are the principal residence of any person over 75 are exempt[129] and the requirement does not extend to radio listeners. The BBC World Service Radio is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the television stations are operated by BBC Worldwide on a commercial subscription basis over cable and satellite services. It is this commercial arm of the BBC that forms half of UKTV along with Virgin Media. There are five major nationwide television channels in the UK: BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4 and Five - currently transmitted by analogue terrestrial, free-to-air signals with the latter three channels funded by commercial advertising. In Wales, S4/C the Welsh Fourth Channel replaces Channel 4, carrying Welsh language programmes at peak times. It also transmits Channel 4 programmes at other times.

The UK now has a large number of digital terrestrial channels including a further six from the BBC, five from ITV and three from Channel 4, and one from S4/C which is solely in Welsh, among a variety of others.

The vast majority of digital cable services are provided by Virgin Media with satellite being provided by BSkyB and free-to-air digital terrestrial television by Freeview. The entire country will switch to digital by 2012.

Radio in the UK is dominated by BBC Radio, which operates ten national networks and over forty local radio stations. The most popular radio station, by number of listeners, is BBC Radio 2, closely followed by BBC Radio 1. There are hundreds of mainly local commercial radio stations across the country offering a variety of music or talk formats.

Traditionally, British newspapers could be split into quality, serious-minded newspaper (usually referred to as "broadsheets" due to their large size) and the more populist, tabloid varieties. For convenience of reading, many traditional broadsheets have switched to a more compact-sized format, traditionally used by tabloids. The Sun has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper in the UK, with approximately a quarter of the market; its sister paper, The News of The World similarly leads the Sunday newspaper market,[130] and traditionally focuses on celebrity-led stories. The Daily Telegraph, a right wing broadsheet paper, has overtaken The Times (tabloid size format) as the highest-selling of the "quality" newspapers.[131] The Guardian is a more liberal "quality" broadsheet. The Financial Times is the main business paper, printed on distinctive salmon-pink broadsheet paper.

First printed in 1737, the Belfast News Letter is the oldest known English-speaking daily newspaper still in publication today. One of its fellow Northern Irish competitors, The Irish News, has been twice ranked as the best regional newspaper in the United Kingdom, in 2006 and 2007.[132] Aside from newspapers, British magazines and journals have achieved worldwide circulation including The Economist and Nature.

Scotland has a distinct tradition of newspaper readership (see List of newspapers in Scotland). The tabloid Daily Record has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper outselling the Scottish Sun by 4-1 while its sister paper, the Sunday Mail similarly leads the Sunday newspaper market. The leading "quality" daily newspaper in Scotland is The Herald, though it is the Scotsman's sister paper, the Scotland on Sunday that leads in the Sunday newspaper market. [133]

Classical music: Notable composers from the United Kingdom have included William Byrd, Henry Purcell, Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Arthur Sullivan (most famous for working with librettist Sir W. S. Gilbert), Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Benjamin Britten, pioneer of modern British opera. London remains one of the major classical music capitals of the world.

Popular music: Prominent among the UK contributors to the development of rock music in the 1960s and 1970s were The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Queen, and Black Sabbath. Heavy metal, hard rock, punk rock and New Wave were among the variations that followed. In the early 1980s, UK bands from the New Romantic scene such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Spandau Ballet, Soft Cell and Ultravox were prominent. In the 1990s, Britpop bands and electronica music attained international success. More recent pop acts, including The Smiths, Oasis and the Spice Girls, have ensured the continuation of the UK's massive contribution to popular music.

The United Kingdom is famous for the tradition of "British Empiricism", a branch of the philosophy of knowledge that states that only knowledge verified by experience is valid. The most famous philosophers of this tradition are John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. Britain is notable for a theory of moral philosophy, Utilitarianism, first used by Jeremy Bentham and later by John Stuart Mill, in his short work Utilitarianism. Other eminent philosophers from the UK include William of Ockham, Thomas Hobbes, Bertrand Russell, Adam Smith and Alfred Ayer. Foreign born philosophers who settled in the UK include Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx, Karl Popper, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The modern scientific method was promoted by the English philosopher Francis Bacon in the early seventeenth century, and subsequent advances credited to British scientists and engineers include:

Notable civil engineering projects, whose pioneers included Isambard Kingdom Brunel, contributed to the world's first national railway transport system. Other advances pioneered in the UK include the marine chronometer, television, the jet engine, the modern bicycle, electric lighting, the electric motor, the screw propeller, the internal combustion engine, military radar, the electronic computer, vaccination and antibiotics.

Scientific journals produced in the UK include Nature, the British Medical Journal and The Lancet. In 2006, it was reported that the UK provided 9% of the world's scientific research papers and a 12% share of citations.[134]

The Royal Academy is located in London. Other major schools of art include the Slade School of Art; the six-school University of the Arts, London, which includes the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Chelsea College of Art and Design; the Glasgow School of Art, and Goldsmiths, University of London. This commercial venture is one of Britain's foremost visual arts organisations. Major British artists include Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, William Blake, J. M. W. Turner, William Morris, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Gilbert and George, Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Howard Hodgkin, Antony Gormley, and Anish Kapoor. During the late 1980s and 1990s, the Saatchi Gallery in London brought to public attention a group of multigenre artists who would become known as the Young British Artists. Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Rachel Whiteread, Tracy Emin, Mark Wallinger, Steve McQueen, Sam Taylor-Wood, and the Chapman Brothers are among the better known members of this loosely affiliated movement.

London

Education

London's other universities, such as Brunel University, City University, London Metropolitan University, Imperial College London, Middlesex University, University of East London, the University of Westminster and London South Bank University, are not part of the University of London. Some were polytechnics until these were granted university status in 1992, and others which were founded much earlier. London is also known globally for its business education, with the London Business School (ranked 1st in Europe - Business Week) and Cass Business School (Europe's largest finance school) both being top world-rated business schools.

London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions which are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The Natural History Museum (biology and geology), Science Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum (fashion and design) are clustered in South Kensington's "museum quarter", while the British Museum houses historic artefacts from around the world. The British Library at St Pancras is the UK's national library, housing 150 million items.[117] The city also houses extensive art collections, primarily in the National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern. See the list of museums in London.

Society and culture

Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. Shoreditch and Hoxton in the East End contain a plethora of bars, nightclubs, restaurants and galleries. Islington's one mile (2 km) long Upper Street, extending northwards from The Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the UK.

Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly one mile (2 km) long »”which makes it the longest shopping street in the world »”and home to many shops and department stores including Selfridges. The adjoining Bond Street in Mayfair is an extremely upmarket location, home to fashion, jewelery, and accessories design houses. Knightsbridge  »” home to the Harrods department store »” lies just to the southwest. Together with these, the fashionable shopping areas of Sloane Street, and Kings Road represent London's prestigious role in the world of fashion. London is home to Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York. London also has a high number of street markets, including Camden Market for fashions and alternative products, Portobello Road for antiques, and vintage and one-off clothes, and Borough Market for organic and specialist foods. London is known for its varying and outstanding cuisine and variety of restaurants, the London and British press are often used by Londoners (more than tourists) to gauge the quality of new restaurants. Publications such at Time Out, Lusso Magazine, and Square Meal contain multiple restaurant reviews each issue. Some of the most highly acclaimed restaurants recently include Gaucho, Momos, Kensington Roof Gardens, OXO Tower, the Mandarin Oriental's restaurant, Palm Beach, Lincontro and the very recently opened Mango Tree.[118]

London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown. Soho's variety of restaurants includes Italian- and Greek-influenced establishments among others, as well as all manner of novelties and oddities. More upmarket restaurants are scattered around central London, with concentrations in Mayfair, Knightsbridge and Notting Hill. Across the city, areas home to particular ethnic groups are often recognizable by restaurants, food shops and market stalls offering their local fare, and the large supermarket chains stock such items in areas with sizable ethnic groups.

There are a variety of regular annual events. The Caribbean-descended community in Notting Hill in West London organizes the colourful Notting Hill Carnival, Europe's biggest street carnival, every summer. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, while traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a very formal military pageant to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.

London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, famous for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London.[119] James Boswell's biographical Life of Johnson mostly takes place in London, and is the source of Johnson's famous aphorism: "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague.[119] William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work - most notably his play The Alchemist - was set in the city.[119] Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's famous Sherlock Holmes stories.[119] Trollope's Palliser novels are largely set in London, vividly depicting Westminster and its surrounds. The 1933 novel Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell describes life in poverty in both cities.[119] A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor. Academic Bloomsbury and hilly Hampstead have traditionally been the liberal, literary heartlands of the city.

London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community centred in Soho in central London. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London. Many films have also used London as a location and have done much to shape international perceptions of the city. See main article London in film.

The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including the Central School of Speech and Drama (alumni: Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier), the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (alumni: Jim Broadbent and Donald Sutherland) and the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (alumni: Joan Collins and Roger Moore).

London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI and Decca Records, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals.

London is home to many orchestras and concert halls such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra), the Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts), the Royal Festival Hall (Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Sinfonietta) and Wigmore Hall.[120] London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.[120] The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet and the English National Ballet are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, the Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall.[120]

As a cultural centre for the United Kingdom, London has had a major role in many popular music movements. It has numerous famous venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court and Wembley Arena, as well as more intimate venues, such as Brixton Academy and Hammersmith Apollo.[120] The area around the northern part of Charing Cross Road in Westminster is famous for its shops that sell modern musical instruments and audio equipment. London was home of one of the legs for both the Live Aid and Live 8 concerts.

London and its surrounding Home Counties have spawned iconic and popular artists. London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the famous Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles created many of their hits. Musicians such as Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Freddie Mercury have lived in London.[121] Famous musicians and groups associated with London include The Who, Fleetwood Mac, Iron Maiden, Elton John, Elvis Costello, Cliff Richard, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones. London was instrumental in the development of punk music, with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Jam, and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city.

As Britain's largest urban area, London has played a key role in the development of most British-born strains of "urban" and electronic music, such as drum and bass, UK garage, grime and dubstep, and is home to many UK hip hop artists.

The largest entertainment venture of all time, The Phantom of the Opera, a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, premiered here at Her Majesty's Theatre, and emerged as the highest grossing entertainment event with US $3.3 billion, and attendance of 80 million worldwide.

London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times.[123] London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.

London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football.[124] London has thirteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League (Arsenal, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham United and Chelsea), plus a further eight in the remaining three divisions (Barnet, Brentford, Charlton Athletic, Crystal Palace, Dagenham & Redbridge, Leyton Orient, Millwall and Queens Park Rangers), plus countless non-league and amateur football teams. The city has the largest number of professional teams in the world.

London has a special place in the history of Association Football. The playing of football in London has been well documented since it was first outlawed in 1314. In the sixteenth century the headmaster of St Paul's School Richard Mulcaster is credited with taking mob football and transforming it into organised and refereed team football. The modern game of football was first codified in 1863 in London and subsequently spread worldwide. Key to the establishment of the modern game was Londoner Ebenezer Cobb Morley who was a founding member of the Football Association, the oldest football organisation in the world. Morley wrote to Bell's Life newspaper proposing a governing body for football which led directly to the first meeting at the Freemason's Tavern in central London of the FA. He wrote the first set of rules of true modern football at his house in Barnes. The modern passing game was invented in London in the early 1870s by the Royal Engineers A.F.C.[125][126]

London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London). London also has many famous other rugby union clubs in lower leagues, including Richmond F.C., Blackheath R.C., Rosslyn Park F.C. and Barnes R.F.C.

London also has its own rugby league Super League club in Harlequins RL and the National League Two team the London Skolars.

Since 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. The new Wembley Stadium will serve exactly the same purposes. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 82,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.[127]

Basketball in London has seen many powerful teams succumb to financial difficulties and disappear without a trace. London Towers are the most recognisable name to experience the rise and fall, and are joined by Greater London Leopards and, in 2007, London United.

The capital's only representative in the top-tier British Basketball League is newly elected London Capital, who boast former Los Angeles Lakers star Steve Bucknall as their coach. They play their home games at Capital City Academy, although rumours abound suggest a future move to Wembley Arena, along with the return of the Towers to the planned Croydon Arena.

Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C) in Kennington.

One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a 26.2 mile (~42 km) course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.

Twinning

The Greater London Authority has twin and sister city agreements with the following cities[128]

United Kingdom

Sport

The Scottish football league system is much smaller, with just two national leagues: the Scottish Premier League (SPL) and the Scottish Football League which has three divisions. There are, however, other regional leagues that are not connected to the national system, most notably the Highland Football League. One English club, Berwick Rangers, plays in the Scottish system. Scotland is home to world-renowned football clubs such as Rangers and Celtic. Scottish teams that have been successful in European Competitions include Celtic (European Cup in 1967), Rangers (European Cup Winners Cup 1972) and Aberdeen (European Cup Winners Cup and European Super Cup in 1983).

The Welsh football league system includes the League of Wales and regional leagues. League of Wales club The New Saints play their home matches on the English side of the border in Oswestry. The Welsh clubs of Cardiff City, Colwyn Bay, Merthyr Tydfil, Newport County, Swansea City and Wrexham play in the English system. Cardiff's 73,000 seater Millennium Stadium is the principal sporting stadium of Wales.

The Northern Irish football league system includes the Irish Football League. One Northern Irish club, Derry City, plays their football outside of the UK in the Republic of Ireland football league system.

Both forms of rugby are national sports. Rugby League originates from and is generally played in the Northern England, whilst Rugby Union is played predominantly in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and Southern England. Though supposedly originating from the actions of William Webb Ellis at the School at Rugby, it is now considered the national sport of Wales. In rugby league the UK has been represented by a single 'Great Britain' team but this will change for the 2008 Rugby League World Cup in which Scotland, England and Ireland will compete as separate nations.[125] This bring it into line with Rugby Union in which England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland (which consists of players from Ireland and Northern Ireland) already compete in international competition. However, every four years a British and Irish Lions team tours Australia, New Zealand or South Africa, composed of players selected from all the Home nations.

There is no UK-wide team in Cricket. The game was invented in England and the England Cricket Team, technically the England and Wales team, is the only national team in the UK with Test status. Irish and Scottish players have played for England because neither Scotland nor Ireland have Test status and only play in One Day Internationals. As of 2006, teams representing Scotland, England (and Wales), and Ireland (including Northern Ireland) compete at the One-Day International level. England and Wales has a professional league championship in which County teams compete.

The game of tennis first originated from the City of Birmingham between 1859 and 1865. The Wimbledon Championships are international tennis events held in Wimbledon in south London every summer and are regarded as the most prestigious event of the global tennis calendar.

Thoroughbred racing is popular throughout the UK. It originated under Charles II of England as the "Sport of Kings" and is a royal pastime to this day. World-famous horse races include the Grand National, the Epsom Derby and Royal Ascot. The town of Newmarket is considered the centre of English racing, largely due to the famous Newmarket Racecourse.

The UK has proved successful in the international sporting arena in rowing. It is widely considered that the sport's most successful rower is Steven Redgrave who won five gold medals and one bronze medal at five consecutive Olympic Games as well as numerous wins at the World Rowing Championships and Henley Royal Regatta.

Golf is one of the most popular participation sports played in the UK, with St Andrews in Scotland being the sport's home course.

Shinty (or camanachd) (A sport derived from the same root as the Irish hurling and similar to bandy) is popular in the Scottish Highlands, sometimes attracting crowds numbering thousands in the most sparsely populated region of the UK.

The country is closely associated with motorsport. Many teams and drivers in Formula One (F1) are based in the UK and drivers from Britain have won more world titles than any other country. The country hosts legs of the F1 and World Rally Championship and has its own Touring Car Racing championship, the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC). The British Grand Prix takes place at Silverstone each July.

Culture

The origins of the UK as a political union of formerly independent countries has resulted in the preservation of distinctive cultures in each of the home nations.

For details, see articles on:Culture of England, Culture of Scotland, Culture of Wales, Culture of Northern Ireland.

The United Kingdom has been influential in the development of cinema, with the Ealing Studios claiming to be the oldest studios in the world. Despite a history of important and successful productions, the industry is characterised by an ongoing debate about its identity, and the influences of American and European cinema. Famous films include the Harry Potter and Ian Fleming's James Bond series which, although now made by American studios, used British source materials, locations, actors and filming crew.

The English playwright and poet William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time.[126][127][128]

Among the earliest English writers are Geoffrey of Monmouth (12th century) , Geoffrey Chaucer (14th century) , and Thomas Malory (15th century). In the 18th century, Samuel Richardson is often credited with inventing the modern novel. In the 19th century, there followed further innovation by Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, the social campaigner Charles Dickens, the naturalist Thomas Hardy, the visionary poet William Blake and romantic poet William Wordsworth. Twentieth century writers include the science fiction novelist H. G. Wells, the controversial D. H. Lawrence, the modernist Virginia Woolf, the prophetic novelist George Orwell and the poet John Betjeman. Most recently, the children's fantasy Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling has recalled the popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Scotland's contribution includes the detective writer Arthur Conan Doyle, romantic literature by Sir Walter Scott, the epic adventures of Robert Louis Stevenson and the celebrated poet Robert Burns. More recently, the modernist and nationalist Hugh MacDiarmid and Neil M. Gunn contributed to the Scottish Renaissance. A more grim outlook is found in Ian Rankin's stories and the psychological horror-comedy of Iain Banks. Scotland's capital, Edinburgh, is UNESCO's first worldwide city of literature.

In the early medieval period, Welsh writers composed the Mabinogion. In modern times, the poets R.S. Thomas and Dylan Thomas have brought Welsh culture to an international audience.

Authors from other nationalities, particularly from Ireland, or from Commonwealth countries, have lived and worked in the UK. Significant examples through the centuries include Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and more recently British authors born abroad such as Kazuo Ishiguro and Sir Salman Rushdie.

In theatre, Shakespeare's contemporaries Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson added depth. More recently Alan Ayckbourn, Harold Pinter, Michael Frayn, Tom Stoppard and David Edgar have combined elements of surrealism, realism and radicalism.

The prominence of the English language gives the UK media a widespread international dimension.

The BBC is the UK's publicly funded radio, television and internet broadcasting corporation, and is the oldest and largest broadcaster in the world. It operates several television channels and radio stations in both the UK and abroad. The BBC's international television news service, BBC World, is broadcast throughout the world and the BBC World Service radio network is broadcast in thirty-three languages globally, as well as services in the national language of Wales on BBC Radio Cymru and programmes in Scottish Gaelic in Scotland and Irish in Northern Ireland.

The domestic services of the BBC are funded by the television licence, a legal requirement for any British household with a television receiver that is in use to receive broadcasts, regardless of whether or not the householders watch BBC channels. Households which are the principal residence of any person over 75 are exempt[129] and the requirement does not extend to radio listeners. The BBC World Service Radio is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the television stations are operated by BBC Worldwide on a commercial subscription basis over cable and satellite services. It is this commercial arm of the BBC that forms half of UKTV along with Virgin Media. There are five major nationwide television channels in the UK: BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4 and Five - currently transmitted by analogue terrestrial, free-to-air signals with the latter three channels funded by commercial advertising. In Wales, S4/C the Welsh Fourth Channel replaces Channel 4, carrying Welsh language programmes at peak times. It also transmits Channel 4 programmes at other times.

The UK now has a large number of digital terrestrial channels including a further six from the BBC, five from ITV and three from Channel 4, and one from S4/C which is solely in Welsh, among a variety of others.

The vast majority of digital cable services are provided by Virgin Media with satellite being provided by BSkyB and free-to-air digital terrestrial television by Freeview. The entire country will switch to digital by 2012.

Radio in the UK is dominated by BBC Radio, which operates ten national networks and over forty local radio stations. The most popular radio station, by number of listeners, is BBC Radio 2, closely followed by BBC Radio 1. There are hundreds of mainly local commercial radio stations across the country offering a variety of music or talk formats.

Traditionally, British newspapers could be split into quality, serious-minded newspaper (usually referred to as "broadsheets" due to their large size) and the more populist, tabloid varieties. For convenience of reading, many traditional broadsheets have switched to a more compact-sized format, traditionally used by tabloids. The Sun has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper in the UK, with approximately a quarter of the market; its sister paper, The News of The World similarly leads the Sunday newspaper market,[130] and traditionally focuses on celebrity-led stories. The Daily Telegraph, a right wing broadsheet paper, has overtaken The Times (tabloid size format) as the highest-selling of the "quality" newspapers.[131] The Guardian is a more liberal "quality" broadsheet. The Financial Times is the main business paper, printed on distinctive salmon-pink broadsheet paper.

First printed in 1737, the Belfast News Letter is the oldest known English-speaking daily newspaper still in publication today. One of its fellow Northern Irish competitors, The Irish News, has been twice ranked as the best regional newspaper in the United Kingdom, in 2006 and 2007.[132] Aside from newspapers, British magazines and journals have achieved worldwide circulation including The Economist and Nature.

Scotland has a distinct tradition of newspaper readership (see List of newspapers in Scotland). The tabloid Daily Record has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper outselling the Scottish Sun by 4-1 while its sister paper, the Sunday Mail similarly leads the Sunday newspaper market. The leading "quality" daily newspaper in Scotland is The Herald, though it is the Scotsman's sister paper, the Scotland on Sunday that leads in the Sunday newspaper market. [133]

Classical music: Notable composers from the United Kingdom have included William Byrd, Henry Purcell, Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Arthur Sullivan (most famous for working with librettist Sir W. S. Gilbert), Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Benjamin Britten, pioneer of modern British opera. London remains one of the major classical music capitals of the world.

Popular music: Prominent among the UK contributors to the development of rock music in the 1960s and 1970s were The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Queen, and Black Sabbath. Heavy metal, hard rock, punk rock and New Wave were among the variations that followed. In the early 1980s, UK bands from the New Romantic scene such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Spandau Ballet, Soft Cell and Ultravox were prominent. In the 1990s, Britpop bands and electronica music attained international success. More recent pop acts, including The Smiths, Oasis and the Spice Girls, have ensured the continuation of the UK's massive contribution to popular music.

The United Kingdom is famous for the tradition of "British Empiricism", a branch of the philosophy of knowledge that states that only knowledge verified by experience is valid. The most famous philosophers of this tradition are John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. Britain is notable for a theory of moral philosophy, Utilitarianism, first used by Jeremy Bentham and later by John Stuart Mill, in his short work Utilitarianism. Other eminent philosophers from the UK include William of Ockham, Thomas Hobbes, Bertrand Russell, Adam Smith and Alfred Ayer. Foreign born philosophers who settled in the UK include Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx, Karl Popper, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The modern scientific method was promoted by the English philosopher Francis Bacon in the early seventeenth century, and subsequent advances credited to British scientists and engineers include:

Notable civil engineering projects, whose pioneers included Isambard Kingdom Brunel, contributed to the world's first national railway transport system. Other advances pioneered in the UK include the marine chronometer, television, the jet engine, the modern bicycle, electric lighting, the electric motor, the screw propeller, the internal combustion engine, military radar, the electronic computer, vaccination and antibiotics.

Scientific journals produced in the UK include Nature, the British Medical Journal and The Lancet. In 2006, it was reported that the UK provided 9% of the world's scientific research papers and a 12% share of citations.[134]

The Royal Academy is located in London. Other major schools of art include the Slade School of Art; the six-school University of the Arts, London, which includes the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Chelsea College of Art and Design; the Glasgow School of Art, and Goldsmiths, University of London. This commercial venture is one of Britain's foremost visual arts organisations. Major British artists include Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, William Blake, J. M. W. Turner, William Morris, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Gilbert and George, Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Howard Hodgkin, Antony Gormley, and Anish Kapoor. During the late 1980s and 1990s, the Saatchi Gallery in London brought to public attention a group of multigenre artists who would become known as the Young British Artists. Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Rachel Whiteread, Tracy Emin, Mark Wallinger, Steve McQueen, Sam Taylor-Wood, and the Chapman Brothers are among the better known members of this loosely affiliated movement.