ENGLAND
ART AND LITERATURE
ART
LITERATURE
RELIGION AND FESTIVITIES
Remembrance Day (November 11) honours British soldiers who died in World War I.
Other remembrances are unique to England and are nearly inexplicable to outsiders. For example, Guy Fawkes Night (November 5) commemorates a Roman Catholic conspiracy to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605, and Saint George’s Day (April 23) honours England’s patron saint
Many holidays in England, such as Christmas, are celebrated throughout the world, though the traditional English Christmas is less a commercial event than an opportunity for singing and feasting.
HERITAGE
CULTURAL
NATURAL
DURHAM CATHEDRAL
DARTMOUTH CASTLE
STONEHENGE
JURASSIC COAST
TRADITIONS
CULTURE
IDENTITY
IMMIGRATION
from 2013 to 2014 a total of 560000 immigrants were estimated to have arrived in the UK
ILLEGAL ALIENS
a recent study estimates thta the number of illegal immigrants oscillates between 417000 and 863000, including a population of UK-born children
REFUGEES
accordinf to UNHCR statistics, at the end of 2020 there were 132349 refugees, 77245 pending asylum cases and 4662 stateless people in the UK
there exists a refugee council that helps refugees get help, it's called the UNHCR and its part of the United Nations
In its literature, England arguably has attained its most influential cultural expression. For more than a millennium, each stage in the development of the English language has produced its masterworks.
SCULPTURE
CHEESE ROLLING IN THE COSTWOODS:
This odd tradition is well known and takes place every year at Cooper's Hill in the Cotswolds. Competitors chase a 9lb round Double Gloucester cheese as it rolls down the incredibly steep hill, which reaches speeds of up to 70mph! So this one is not for the faint-hearted. The winner gets to take home the giant cheese wheel.
WORLD HEN RACING CHAMPIONSHIP:
If you like the idea of watching a bunch of hens racing each other, then head on down to the World Hen Racing Championship, which takes place annually at the Barley Mow Inn in Bonsall, Derbyshire. Some hen owners now even train their hens for the traditional race, which dates back over 100 years.
The monarch’s official birthday is observed nationally and commemorated in the summer by a military parade called Trooping the Colour, which has been celebrated since the 18th century
Historically, England was a very homogeneous country and developed coherent traditions, but, especially as the British Empire expanded and the country absorbed peoples from throughout the globe, English culture has been accented with diverse contributions from Afro-Caribbeans, Asians, Muslims, and other immigrant groups.
CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS:
All manner of general and esoteric societies, institutions, museums, and foundations can be found in England. One of its more prestigious learned societies is the Royal Society (1660), which awards fellowships, medals, and endowed lectureships based on scientific and technological achievements. The British Museum contains a wealth of archaeological and ethnographic specimens; its extensive library—containing ancient and medieval manuscripts and papyruses—was merged in 1973 with several other holdings to form the British Library.
HISTORY
Little is known of English literature before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, though echoes of England’s Celtic past resound in Arthurian legend. Anglo-Saxon literature, written in the Old English language, is remarkably diverse.
The Elizabethan era of the late 16th century fostered the flowering of the European Renaissance in England and the golden age of English literature. The plays of William Shakespeare achieve a depth of characterization and richness of invention that have fixed them in the dramatic repertoire of virtually every language.
Political and religious conflicts of the 17th century provided a backdrop for a wealth of poetry.
English literature in the 20th century was remade by native writers such as Virginia Woolf and popular novelists such as Agatha Christie fed the English love for mysteries and police procedurals.
The dichotomy of Classicism and Romanticism as well as of reason and imagination came to dominate the 18th century. Also during this period, the novel emerged as a form capable of bringing everyday life into the province of literature, as can be seen in the work of Jane Austen. The Brontë sisters also appeared in this century.
In the mid to late 19th century, English literature increasingly addressed social concerns. Many writers also found a new audience in children, giving rise to work such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and generating later classics such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
PAINTING
THEATRE
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Apart from traces of decoration on standing stones and the “transplanted” art of Roman occupation, the history of sculpture in England is rooted in the Christian church. Monumental crosses of carved stone, similar to the Celtic crosses of Ireland, represent the earliest sculpture of Anglo-Saxon Christians. The tradition of relief carving attained its highest expression in the stonework of the Gothic cathedrals.
The influences of Renaissance and Baroque sculpture on the Continent were slow to reach England. What borrowings there were prior to the 18th century remained ill-conceived and crudely executed. From the 1730s, however, the presence of first-rate foreign artists, together with the flowering of archaeology and the resulting accessibility of antique art, brought a new refinement to English sculpture.
While the Romantic movement of the 19th century, which assailed the academic restraint of Neoclassicism in all the arts, invested continental sculpture with an increasing subjectivity, as well as a broader range of subject matter, the sculptors of England pursued a more conservative path. Many free-standing public monuments date from this period.
Theatre is probably the performing art for which England is best known. Theatrical performance as such emerged during the Middle Ages in the form of mumming plays. Under the influence of Christianity, mumming plays gradually were absorbed by mystery plays (centred on the Passion of Christ).
That England remains one of the foremost contributors to world theatre can be seen in its lively theatrical institutions, such as the Royal Shakespeare Company (1864; reorganized in 1961 by Peter Hall), the Royal National Theatre (1962), regional theatres such as the Bristol Old Vic, and the great number of theatres that flourish in London’s celebrated West End district.
Painting in England emerged under the auspices of the church. From the 8th to the 14th century the illumination of Gospel manuscripts developed from essentially abstract decoration derived from Celtic motifs to self-contained pictorial illustration more in keeping with the style of the European continent. In the 15th century, Italian innovations in perspective and composition began to appear in English work. The advent of printing during this period, however, rendered the labour-intensive illumination increasingly rare. English painting remained largely unaffected by the concerns of the Renaissance, and it was not until the 1630s, when Charles I employed the Flemish Baroque painters Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck in his court, that a broader artistic current reached England’s shores. Even so, provincial themes and the genres of portrait and landscape continued to preoccupy English painters for the next 150 years.
England's role as a destination for migration also has influenced conceptions of Englishness. Historically, the most prominent immigrant group has been the Irish, who came in two major waves in the modern era: 1847 and 1848 after the potato famine, and during and after World War II. Scots were present in England by the 1700s and settled in England in large numbers during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, often for economic reasons. Welsh in-migration came to prominence when deindustrialization began in Wales in the 1920s. This inmigration has brought the so-called Celtic fringe into English culture in a host of ways. There has also been the impact of Jewish, Flemish, Dutch, French Huguenot, German, Italian, Polish, Turkish, Cypriot, and Chinese cultures since the twelfth century. The loss of Britain's colonies has brought Afro-Caribbeans, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Indians, and migrants from northwestern and eastern Africa in significant numbers. Judgments of whether England's newcomers feel themselves to be "English" vary by group and even by individual.
Symbolism.
From a political standpoint, the monarchy, Parliament, and the English (or British) constitution are central symbols with both physical and ritual manifestations. Equally powerful are the rituals surrounding Parliament's routine. The monarchy expresses itself physically through the palaces and other residences of the royal family. Ritually, the monarchy permeates national life. From the social functions of the elite, which many people follow in the popular press, to the promotion of public causes, to royal weddings, the monarchy's representatives lend an almost sacral quality to public life.
All of us have multiple identities, of course. We may have a strong sense of belonging to one nation or more than one. We may feel powerful allegiance to a county or a city. People in England may feel English, British, something else or a mixture.
A BBC survey tested the relative strengths of people's relationship with different geographies. Its findings suggest 80% of the residents of England identify strongly as English. But it also finds a similar proportion, 82%, strongly identify as British.
Only small proportions said they were one but not the other. British and English identities are intertwined; they are strands of the same national thread.