GREAT BRITAIN
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is situated on the British Isles. The British Isles consist of two large islands, Great Britain and Ireland, and about five thousand small islands. Their total area is over 244,000 square kilometres.
The United Kingdom is made up of four countries: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Their capitals are London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast respectively. Great Britain consists of England, Scotland and Wales and does not include Northern Ireland. But in everyday speech “Great Britain” is used to mean the United Kingdom. The capital of the UK is London.
The British Isles are separated from the continent by the North Sea and the English Channel. The western coast of Great Britain is washed by the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish Sea.
Shakespeare called Britain a “precious stone set in the silver sea” because of its natural beauty. It has a varied countryside where you can find mountains, plains, valleys and sandy beaches. Ben Nevis in Scotland is the highest mountain, but it is only 1343 metres high.
There are a lot of rivers in Great Britain, but they are not very long. The Severn is the longest river, while the Thames is the deepest and the most important one.
The mountains, the Atlantic Ocean( and the warm waters of Gulf Stream influence the climate of the British Isles. It is mild the whole year round.
The UK is one of the world’s smaller countries. Its population is over 58 million. About 80% of the population live in cities.
The UK is a highly developed industrial country. It is known as one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of machinery, electronics, textile, aircraft and navigation equipment. One of the chief industries of the country is shipbuilding.
The UK is a constitutional monarchy. In law, the Head of State is the Queen. In practice, the Queen reigns, but does not rule. The country is ruled by the elected government with the Prime Minister at the head. The British Parliament consists of two chambers: the House of Lords and the House of Commons.
There are three main political parties in Great Britain: the Labour, the Conservative and the Liberal parties.
London is the capital of Great Britain, its political, economic and commercial centre. It’s one of the largest cities in the world and the largest city in Europe. Its population is about 8 million.
London is one of the oldest and most interesting cities in the world.
Traditionally it’s divided into several parts: the City, Westminster, the West End and the East End. They are very different from each other and seem to belong to different towns and epochs.
The heart of London is the City, its financial and business centre. Numerous banks, offices and firms are situated there, including the Bank of England, the Stock Exchange and the Old Bailey. Few people live here, but over a million people come to the City to work. There are some famøus ancient buildings within the City. Perhaps the most striking of them is St Paul’s Cathedral, the greatest of British churches. It was built in the 17th century.by Sir Christopher Wren. The Tower of London was founded by Julius Caesar and in 1066 rebuilt by William the Conqueror. It was used as a fortress, a royal palace and a prison. Now it’s a museum.
Westminster is the historic, the governmental part of London.
Westminster Abbey has more historic, associations than any other building in Britain. Nearly all English kings and queens have been crowned here. Many outstanding statesmen, scientists, writers, poets and painters are buried here: Newton, Darwin, Chaucer, Dickens, Tennyson, Kipling.
Across the road from Westminster Abbey is Westminster Palace, or the Houses of Parliament, the seat of the British Parliament. The Clock Tower of the Houses of Parliament is famous for its big hour bell, known as “Big Ben”.
Buckingham Palace is the official residence of the Queen.
The West End is the richest and most beautiful part of London. It’s the symbol of wealth and luxury. The best hotels, shops, restaurants, clubs, and theatres are situated there. There are splendid houses and lovely gardens belonging to wealthy people.
Trafalgar Square is the geographical centre of London. It was named in memory of Admiral Nelson’s victory in the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The tall Nelson’s Column stands in the middle of the square.
On the north side of Trafalgar Square is the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. Not far away is the British Museum — the biggest museum in London. It contains a priceless collection of ancient manuscripts, coins, sculptures, etc, and is famous for its library.
The East End was once the poorest district of London — with lots of factories and docks, narrow streets and unimpressive buildings. Today, the district is changing very fast. There are huge offices and new blocks of flats in the East End.
The climate in Great Britain is mild and temperate due to the influence of the Gulf Stream.
The British often say: “Other countries have a climate; in England we have weather.” The weather in Britain is very changeable. A fine morning can change into a wet afternoon and evening. And a nasty morning can change to a fine afternoon. That’s why it is natural for the British to use the comparison “as changeable as the weather” of a person who often changes his mood or opinion about something.
The British also say that they have three variants of weather: when it rains in the morning, when it rains in the afternoon or wFien it rains all day long.
The weather is the favourite conversational topic in England. When two Englishmen meet, their first words will be “How do you do?” or “How are you?” And after the reply “Very well, thank you; how are you?” the next remark is almost certain to be about the weather. When they go abroad the British often surprise people of other nationalities by this tendency to talk about the weather, a topic of conversation that other people do not find so interesting.
The best time of the year in Britain is spring (of course, it rains in spring too).
The two worst months in Britain are January and February. They are cold, damp and unpleasant. The best place in the world then is at home by the big fire.
Summer months are rather cold and there can be a lot of rainy days. So most people who look forward to summer holidays, plan to go abroad for the summer — to France, Spain or some other place on the Continent.
The most unpleasant aspect of British weather is fog and smog. This is extremely bad in big cities and especially in London.
The fog spreads everywhere, it is in the streets and it creeps into the houses. Cars move along slowly, but still street accidents are frequent in the fog. People cannot see each other. They creep along the houses touching them with their hands not to lose their way or not to be run over by a car.
There are fewer public holidays in Great Britain than in other European countries. They are: Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, May Day, Spring Bank Holiday and Summer Bank Holiday. Public holidays in Britain are called bank holidays,’because the banks as well as most of the offices and shops are closed.
The most popular holiday is Christmas. Every year the people of Norway give the city of London a present. It’s a big Christmas tree and it stands in Trafalgar Square. Central streets are beautifully decorated.
Before Christmas, groups of singers go from house to house. They collect money for charity and sing carols, tradition1 Christmas songs. Many churches hold a carol service on the Sunday before Christmas.
The fun starts the night before, on the 24 of December. Traditionally this is the day when people decorate their trees. Children hang stockings at the end of their beds, hoping that Father Christmas will come down the chimney during the night and fill them with toys and sweets.
Christmas is a family holiday. Relatives usually meet for the big Christmas dinner of turkey and Christmas pudding. And everyone gives and receives presents. The 26th of December, Boxing Day, is an extra holiday after Christmas Day. This is the time to visit friends and relatives or perhaps sit at home and watch football. New Year’s Day is less popular in Britain than Christmas. But in Scotland, Hogmanay is the biggest festival of the year.
Besides public holidays there are some special festivals in Great Britain. One of them takes place on the 5° of November. On that day, in 1605, Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill King James I. He didn’t succeed. The King’s men found the bomb, took Guy Fawkes to the Tower and cut off his head.
Since that day the British celebrate the 5th of November. They burn a dummy, made of straw and old clothes, on a bonfire and let off fireworks. This dummy is called a “guy” (like Guy Fawkes) and children can often be seen in the streets before the 5th of November saying, “Penny for the guy.” If they collect enough money they can buy some fireworks.
There are also smaller, local festivals in Britain.
Probably in no other country are there such great differences between the various national daily newspapers — in the t,’pe of news they report and the way they report it.
On the one hand, there are the “quality” newspapers: The Times, The Independent, The Guardian, the Financial Times and The Daily Telegraph. These concern themselves, as far as possible, with factual reports of major national and international events, with the world of politics and business and with the arts and sport.
On the other hand, there are the “populars” and “tabloids,” so-called because of their smaller size. The tabloids — the most widely read of which are The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, the Daily Mirror, The Sun and The Daily Star — concentrate on more emotive reporting of stories often featuring sex, violence, the Royal Family, film and pop stars, and sport. It’s often said that the popular press aims to entertain its readers rather than inform them.
The tabloid press is much more popular than the quality press.
In some countries, newspapers are owned by government or by political parties. This is not the case in Britain. Newspapers here are mot1y owned by individuals or by publishing companies, and the editors of the papers are usually allowed considerate freedom of expression. This is not to say that newspapers are without political bias. Papers like The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Express and The Sun, for example, usually reflect Conservative opinions in their comment and reporting, while the Daily Mirror and The Guardian have a more left-wing bias.
In addition to the 12 national daily newspapers there are nine national papers which are published on Sundays.Most of the “Sundays” contain more reading matter than daily papers, and several of them also include “colour supplements” — separate colour magazines which contain photographically-illustrated feature articles. Reading a Sunday paper, like having a big Sunday lunch, is an important tradition in many British households.
Besides, nearly every area in Britain has one or more local newspapers.
The British are one of the biggest newspaper-reading nations in the world.
Every nation and every country has it own customs and traditions. In Britain traditions play a more important part in people’s life than in other countries.
The British are proud of their traditions and carefully keep them up. Some ceremonies are rather formal, such as the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, Trooping the Colour, the State opening of Parliament. Sometimes you will see a group of cavalrymen riding on black horses through the streets of London. They wear red uniforms, shining helmets, long black boots and long white gloves. These men are Life Guards. Their special duty is toguard the king or the queen of Great Britain and very important guests of the country.
To this day a British family prefers a house with a fireplace and a garden to a flat in a modem house with central heating. Most British love gardens. Sometimes the garden in front of the house is a little square covered with cement painted green in imitation of grass and a box of flowers. They love flowers very much.
The British like animals very much, too. Pet dogs, cats, horses, ducks, chickens, canaries and other friends of man have a much better life in Britain than anywhere else. In Britain they have special dog shops selling food, clothes and other things for dogs. In recent years the British began to show love for more “exotic” animals such as crocodiles, elephants, tigers, cobras, camels.
Holidays are especially rich in old traditions and are different in Scotland,
Ireland, Wales and England. Christmas is a great English national holiday and in
Scotland it is not observed at all. But six days later, on New Year’s Eve the Scots
begin to enjoy themselves. All the shops and factories are closed on New Year’s Day.
People invite their friends to their houses. Greetings and presents are offered.
Some British traditions are strange, some are funny, but they are all interesting.
William Shakespeare, the greatest and most famous of English writers, and probably the greatest playwright who has ever lived, was bora on the 23d of April, 1564, in Stratford-on-Avon.
In spite of his fame we know very little about his life. At the age of six he was sent to school, but had to leave it at the age of 13. His father, John Shakespeare, was a glove-maker, and when he fell into debt, William had to help him in the trade.
Just what William did between his fourteenth and eighteenth year isn’t known. At the age of eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. Aim was eight years older than her husband and the marriage wasn’t a happy one.
When Shakespeare was twenty-one, he went to London. We don’t know why he left Stratford-on-Avon.
There is a story that Shakespeare’s first job in London was holding rich men’s horses at the theatre door. But nobody can be sure that this story is true.
Later, Shakespeare became an actor and a member of a very successful acting company. It’s highly probable that The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet and some other plays by Shakespeare were performed for the first time on this stage.
Very soon, however, the actors were told that they could no longer use the land that their theatre was built on and the company had nowhere else to perform. There is a story that in the dead of night the whole acting troop took down their theatre, timber by timber, brick by brick. They carried it across the river and rebuilt it. The new theatre was called the Globe. Shakespeare’s Globe was rather different from modern theatres. The plays were performed in the open air and the audience got wet if it rained. There was no scenery, very few props, and the only lighting was the daylight that came from the open roof above. Women in those days weren’t allowed to act in public and all the parts (even Juliet!) were played by men. Much of the audience stood to watch the performance and moved around, talking with each other and throwing fruit at the stage if they didn’t like something.
Shakespeare wrote 37 plays: 10 tragedies (such as Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth), 17 comedies (such as As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing), 10 historical plays (such as Henry IV, Richard III). He also left 7 books of poems.
Most of Shakespeare’s plays were not published in his lifetime. So some of them may have been lost in the fire when the Globe burnt down in 1613.
Shakespeare spent the last years of his ‘life at Stratford, where he died, ironically, on the same date as his birthday, the 23d of April, 1616. He was buried in the church of Stratford. A monument was erected to the.memory of the great playwright in the Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. In 1997, Shakespeare’s Globe was restored.
“Halt! Who goes there?”“The Keys.”
“Whose Keys?”
“Queen Elizabeth Keys.”“God preserve Queen
Elizabeth.”
“Amen!”
These words can be heard every night just before 10 o’clock. They mean that the Tower’s been locked up for the night. The Ceremony of the Keys is at least 700 years old.
What is the Tower?
The Tower has been many things: a palace, a fortress, a prison, a place of execution, a Zoo. Today, it is best known as a historical museum. About 150 people and six ravens live here.
The Zoo
Kings sometimes get strange presents. About 700 years ago King Henry III got
3 leopards, 1 elephant and a polar bear. He kept them in the Tower. The elephant died
after two years but the polar bear was happy as it went swimming and fishing in the
Thames with a strong rope round its neck. That was the start of the London Zoo. In
1835 all animals left the Tower and were sent to the Zoo in Regent’s Park. Only the
ravens stayed on.
Ravens
There are always at least 6 ravens at the Tower. The first ones probably built their nests here because they liked the old stone houses and walls. There is a story that they bring good luck to Britain, if they stay at the Tower. That’s why they get “paid” meat and biscuits every day. But their wings are cut so that they can’t fly away. They are not very friendly. Once one of them bit a German minister.
The Beefeaters
The Beefeaters used to guard the Tower and its prisoners. Today they work mostly as guides. They show people around and tell stories about all the terrible things that have happened here. They still wear the high mfjs. and scarlet tunics assigned to them during the reign of Queen 1lizabeth I.
The Prison
The Tower was a royal palace long ago. Then it became a prison. Kings, queens and noblemen were locked up here. Many, like Lady Jane Grey, lost their heads on Tower Green inside the walls or nearby on Tower Hill. The last time it was used as a prison was during the Second World War when German spies were kept and sometimes shot there.
The Crown Jewels
The Crown Jewels are shown in the Jewel House. They are well looked after. Once they were stolen by a man called Colonel Blood. But he was caught just as he was leaving the Tower. Thomas Blood didn’t have to go to prison. The king gave him a pension instead. It was in 1671.
In 1949, an American actor Sam Wanamaker came to London and decided to visit the site of the famous Globe Theatre where Shakespeare had staged his plays. All he found, however, was a plaque on the wall of a brewery: “Here stood the Globe Playhouse of Shakespeare”. Wanamaker was so shocked that he decided to rebuild the Globe.
It took many years to raise the money, get permission and find out exactly what the place looked like in the old days.
On June 12 1997, Her Majesty the Queen opened the International Shakespeare Globe Centre, the re-creation of Shakespeare’s theatre. Unfortunately, Sam Wanamaker died in 1993 and wasn’t in the audience to see his dream finally come true.
Today, you can visit the beautiful new ‘Globe, and in summer you can even see a play performed as it would have been in Shakespeare’s day.
The architects who have worked on the building believe the new theatre is as close to the original as it is possible to be.
Shows at the new Globe are staged in much the same way as they were then — with no scenery, spotlights, or microphones. And, as in Shakespeare’s time, the crowd is free to join in, calling out to the actors an&getting involved in the story.
Women now play on the stage of the Globe, but on special occasions you can experience Shakespeare’s plays the way his audience would have: an all-male performance in original clothing and without interval. If it rains, however, you’ll be given a rain hat so that you wouldn’t get wet to the skin.
The theatre’s artistic director, Mark Rylance, says that his dream is “to reawaken a love of words — a theatre for the heart, not just the intellect”. He expects the audiences to move around, talk, drink beer and throw fruit at the actors as they did in Shakespeare’s time.
Получите свидетельство
Вход
Материал по английскому языку "Великобритания" (52 КB)
0
476
11
Нравится
0
