England (pronounced IPA: /ˈɪŋglənd/) (Middle English: Engelond) is the largest and most populous constituent country of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total population of the United Kingdom, whilst the mainland territory of England occupies most of the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west. Elsewhere, it's bordered by the North Sea, Irish Sea, Atlantic Ocean, and English Channel.
England became a unified state during the 10th century and takes its name from the Angles, one of a number of Germanic tribes who settled in the territory during the 5th and 6th centuries. The capital city of England is London, which is the largest city in Great Britain, and the largest city in the European Union by most, but not all, measures.
England ranks amongst the world's most influential and far-reaching centres of cultural development. It is the place of origin of both the English language and the Church of England, and English law forms the basis of the legal systems of many countries; in addition, London, the country's capital, was the centre of the British Empire, and the country was also the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. England was the first country in the world to become industrialised. England is home to the Royal Society, which laid the foundations of modern experimental science. England was the world's first parliamentary democracy and consequently many constitutional, governmental and legal innovations that had their origin in England have been widely adopted by other nations.
The Kingdom of England was a separate state until 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union resulted in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain, with the Principality of Wales already in the English state. Great Britain is the term in use for the largest island in the British Isles, with the name's origins in the Celtic 'People of the Islands', or Pretani.
Etymology and usage
England is named after the Angles, the largest of a number of Germanic tribes who settled in England in the fifth and sixth centuries, and who are believed to have originated in the peninsula of Angeln, in what is now Denmark and northern Germany. (The further etymology of this tribe's name remains uncertain, although a popular theory holds that it need be sought no further than the word angle itself, and refers to a fish-hook-shaped region of Holstein.)
The Angles' name has had a variety of different spellings. The earliest known reference to these people is under the Latinised version Anglii used by Tacitus in chapter 40 of his Germania, written around 98 AD. He gives no precise indication of their geographical position within Germania, but states that, together with six other tribes, they worshipped a goddess named Nerthus, whose sanctuary was situated on "an island in the Ocean."
The early 8th century historian
Bede, in his
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (
Ecclesiastical History of the English People), refers to the
English people as
Angelfolc (in English) or
Angli (in
Latin).
According to the
Oxford English Dictionary, the first known usage of "England" referring the southern part of the island of Great Britain was in 897, with the modern spelling first used in 1538.
The word "England" is often used colloquially—and incorrectly—to refer to Great Britain or the United Kingdom as a whole. There are many instances of this usage in history, where patriotic references to "England" actually intend to include Scotland and Wales as well. This term is used throughout the world and even by English people; the usage is problematic and causes offence in many parts of Britain.
History
Prehistoric England
Bones and flint tools found in
Norfolk and
Suffolk show that
Homo erectus lived in what is now England around 700,000 years ago. At this time, England was linked to mainland
Europe by a large land bridge. The current position of the English Channel was a large river flowing westwards and fed by tributaries that would later become the
Thames and the
Seine. This area was greatly depopulated during the period of the last major ice age, as were other regions of the British Isles. In the subsequent recolonisation, after the thawing of the ice, genetic research shows that present-day England was the last area of the British Isles to be repopulated, circa 13,000 years ago. The
migrants arriving during this period contrast with the other of the inhabitants of the British Isles, coming across land from the south east of Europe, whereas earlier arriving inhabitants came north along a coastal route from Iberia. These migrants would later adopt the
Celtic culture that came to dominate much of western Europe.
Roman conquest of Britain
By AD 43, the time of the main Roman
invasion of Britain, Britain had already frequently been the target of invasions, planned and actual, by forces of the
Roman Republic and
Roman Empire. It was first invaded by the Roman dictator
Julius Caesar in 55 BC, but it was conquered fully by the
Emperor Claudius in AD 43. Like other regions on the edge of the
empire, Britain had long enjoyed trading links with the Romans, and their economic and cultural influence was a significant part of the British late pre-Roman
Iron Age, especially in the south. With the fall of the Roman empire 400 years later, the Romans left England.
Anglo-Saxon England
The
History of Anglo-Saxon England covers the history of early mediaeval England from the end of Roman Britain and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the fifth century until the Conquest by the Normans in 1066.
Fragmentary knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England in the 5th and 6th centuries comes from the British writer
Gildas (6th century) the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (a history of the English people begun in the 9th century), saints' lives, poetry, archaeological findings, and place-name studies.
The dominant themes of the seventh to tenth centuries were the spread of Christianity and the political unification of England. Christianity is thought to have come from three directions — from
Rome to the south, and
Scotland and
Ireland to the north and west.
Heptarchy is a term used to refer to the existence (as believed) of the seven
petty kingdoms which eventually merged to become the
Kingdom of England during the early 10th century:
Northumbria,
Mercia,
East Anglia,
Essex,
Kent,
Sussex, and
Wessex.
The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms tended to coalesce by means of warfare. As early as the time of
Ethelbert of Kent, one king could be recognised as
Bretwalda ("Lord of Britain"). Generally speaking, the title fell in the 7th century to the kings of Northumbria, in the eighth to those of
Mercia, and finally, in the ninth, to
Egbert of Wessex, who in 825 defeated the Mercians at the
Battle of Ellendun. In the next century his family came to rule all England.
Kingdom of England
Originally, England (or Englaland) was a geographical term to describe the territory of Britain which was occupied by the
Anglo-Saxons, rather than a name of an individual
nation-state. It became politically united through the expansion of the kingdom of Wessex, whose king
Athelstan brought the whole of England under one ruler for the first time in 927, although unification didn't become permanent until 954. In 1016 England was conquered by the Danish king
Canute the Great, and became the centre of government for his short-lived empire which also included
Denmark and
Norway. In 1042 England became a separate kingdom again with the accession of
Edward the Confessor, heir of the native English dynasty.
The Kingdom of England (including Wales) continued to exist as an independent nation-state right through to the
Acts of Union and the
Union of Crowns. However the political ties and direction of England were changed forever by the
Norman Conquest in 1066.
Mediæval England
The next few hundred years saw England as an important part of expanding and dwindling empires based in
France, with the "Kings of England" using England as a source of troops to enlarge their personal holdings in France for many years (
Hundred Years' War); in fact the English crown didn't relinquish its last foothold on mainland France until
Calais was lost during the reign of
Mary Tudor (the Channel Islands are still crown dependencies, though not part of the UK).
The
Principality of Wales, under the control of English
monarchs from the
Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, became part of the
Kingdom of England by the
Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542. Wales shared a
legal identity with England as the joint entity originally called
England and later
England and Wales.
An
epidemic of catastrophic proportions, the
Black Death first reached England in the summer of 1348. The Black Death is estimated to have killed between a third and two-thirds of Europe's population. England alone lost as many as 70% of its population, which passed from 7 million to 2 million in 1400. The
plague repeatedly returned to haunt England throughout the 14th to 17th centuries. The
Great Plague of London in 1665–1666 was the last plague outbreak.
Reformation
During the
English Reformation in the 16th century, the external authority of the
Roman Catholic Church in England was abolished and replaced with
Royal Supremacy and ultimately describes the establishment of a Church of England, outside the Roman Catholic Church, under the Supreme Governance of the English monarch. The English Reformation differed from its European counterparts in that it was a
political, rather than purely
theological, dispute at root. The break with
Rome started in the
reign of
Henry VIII.
The English Reformation paved the way for the spread of
Anglicanism in the church and other institutions.
English Civil War
The
English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations which took place between
Parliamentarians and
Royalists from 1642 until 1651. The
first (1642–1645) and
second (1648–1649)
civil wars pitted the supporters of
King Charles I against the supporters of the
Long Parliament, while the
third war of (1649–1651) saw fighting between supporters of
King Charles II and supporters of the
Rump Parliament. The Civil War ended with the Parliamentary victory at the
Battle of Worcester on
3 September 1651.
The Civil War led to the trial and execution of Charles I, the exile of his son Charles II and the replacement of the English monarchy with the
Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and then with a
Protectorate (1653–1659): the personal rule of
Oliver Cromwell. After a brief return to Commonwealth rule, in 1660
The Crown was
restored and Charles II accepted
Convention Parliament's invitation to return to England. During the
interregnum the monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England came to an end, and the victors consolidated the already-established
Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established a precedent that British monarchs couldn't govern without the consent of Parliament although this wouldn't be cemented until the
Glorious Revolution later in the century.
Great Britain and the United Kingdom
The
Kingdom of England and the
Kingdom of Scotland remained separate, until 1707, when under the Acts of Union, both England and Scotland lost their individual political (though not
legal) identities. This union has subsequently changed its name twice; firstly on the merger with the
Kingdom of Ireland following the
Act of Union in 1800 creating the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Then following the secession from the union of the
Irish Free State under the terms of the
Government of Ireland Act 1920, it became the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Throughout these changes, England (including Wales) retained a separate legal identity from its partners, with a separate
legal system (
English law) from those in
Northern Ireland (
Northern Ireland law) and
Scotland (
Scots law), and eventually the strong feelings of the Welsh were acknowledged when it was decided that the name would henceforth be "England and Wales".
Politics
There hasn't been a
Government of England since 1707, when the
Kingdom of England merged with the
Kingdom of Scotland to form the
Kingdom of Great Britain, although both kingdoms have been ruled by a single monarch since 1603. Prior to the Acts of Union of 1707, England was ruled by a
monarch and the
Parliament of England.
The Scottish and Welsh governing institutions were created by the UK parliament with support from the majority of people of Scotland and Wales in
referenda in 1997 and are not independent of the rest of Britain. However, this gave each country a separate political entity which left England as the only part of Britain directly ruled in nearly all matters by the British government in London. In Cornwall, a region of England claiming a distinct national identity, there has been a campaign for a
Cornish assembly along Welsh lines by nationalist parties such as
Mebyon Kernow.
Because Westminster is the UK parliament but also votes on local English matters devolution of national matters to parliament/assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has refocused attention on a long-standing anomaly called the
West Lothian question. The "Question" is that there's no convention or rule whereby Scottish MPs are barred from voting on issues relating only to England and Wales in the post devolution era.
Welsh devolution has removed the anomaly for Wales, but highlighted the anomaly for England: Scottish and Welsh MPs can vote on English issues, but purely Scottish and Welsh issues are debated in Scotland and Wales, not at Westminster; in fact Scottish MPs are even unable to vote on such issues affecting their
own constituencies. This problem is exacerbated by an over-representation of Scottish MPs in the government, sometimes referred to as the
Scottish mafia; as of September 2006, seven of the twenty-three
Cabinet members are Scottish, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Defence Secretary. In addition, Scotland traditionally benefited from moderate
malapportionment in its favour, increasing its representation to a degree disproportionate to its population. In 2004 the
Scottish Parliament (Constituencies) Act 2004 was passed which rectified this to a degree, reducing the number of MPs representing Scottish constituencies from 73 to 59 and brought the number of voters per constituency closer to that in England. This change was implemented in the
2005 General Election.
In terms of national administration, England's affairs are managed by a combination of the
UK government, the UK parliament, a number of England-specific
quangos, such as
English Heritage, and the mostly unelected
Regional Assemblies (a kind of nascent executive for each English Region).
There are calls for a
devolved English Parliament, and certain English parties go further by calling for the dissolution of the Union entirely. However, the approach favoured by the current
Labour government was (on the basis that England is too large to be governed as a single sub-state entity) to propose the devolution of power to the
Regions of England.
Lord Falconer claimed a devolved English parliament would dwarf the rest of the United Kingdom. Referendums would decide whether people wanted to vote for directly-elected
regional assemblies to watch over the work of the non-elected
Regional Development Agencies.
During the campaign, a common criticism of the proposals was that England didn't need "another tier of bureaucracy". On the other hand, many said that they were not
decentralising enough, and amounted not to devolution, but to little more than local government reorganisation, with no real power being removed from central government, and no real power given to the regions, which wouldn't even gain the limited powers of the
Welsh Assembly, much less the tax-varying and legislative powers of the
Scottish Parliament (but Welsh powers are now being expanded). They said that power was simply re-allocated within the region, with little new resource allocation and no real prospects of Assemblies being able to change the pattern of regional aid. Late in the process, responsibility for regional transport was added to the proposals. This was perhaps crucial in the North East, where resentment at the
Barnett Formula, which delivers greater regional aid to adjacent
Scotland, was a significant impetus for the North East devolution campaign. However, a
referendum on this issue in
North East England on
4 November 2004 rejected this proposal, and plans for referendums in other Regions (such as Yorkshire) were shelved.
Subdivisions
Historically, the highest level of local government in England was the
county. These have their origin in the
shires, the subdivisions of the kingdom of
Wessex, which were extended over the rest of England as Wessex expanded to unite the country in the ninth and tenth centuries. Some of these new shires, particularly in the south-east of England, retained the extent and names of the kingdoms or subdivisions of kingdoms which had existed there before, such as
Sussex and
Kent, but most were new creations, named after their principal town with the suffix "-shire" added, for example
Warwickshire from
Warwick. In the far north of England, the system took longer to become regularised and
County Durham,
Northumberland,
Cumberland and
Westmorland emerged after the
Norman Conquest. The counties each had a
county town.
Since these
historical county lines were drawn up before the
Industrial Revolution and the mass urbanisation of England, the changes in the distribution of population and the demands on local administration resulting from those developments have led to a series of local government reorganisations since the latter part of the nineteenth century. The solution to the emergence of large urban areas was the creation of large
metropolitan counties centred on cities (an example being
Greater Manchester). The creation of
unitary authorities, where
districts gained the administrative status of a county, began with the
1990s reform of local government. Today, some confusion exists between the
ceremonial counties (which don't necessarily form an administrative unit) and the
metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties.
Non-metropolitan counties (or "shire counties") are divided into one or more
districts. At the very lowest level, England is divided into
parishes, though these are not to be found everywhere (many urban areas for example are
unparished). Parishes are prohibited from existing in Greater London.
England is now also divided into
nine regions, which don't have an elected authority and exist to co-ordinate certain local government functions across a wider area.
London is an exception, however, and is the one region which now has a representative
authority as well as a directly elected
mayor. The 32
London boroughs and the
Corporation of London remain the local form of government in the city.
Geography
England comprises the central and southern two-thirds of the island of
Great Britain, plus offshore islands of which the largest is the
Isle of Wight. It is
bordered to the north by
Scotland and to the west by
Wales. It is closer to continental Europe than any other part of Britain, divided from France only by a 52 km (24
statute mile or 21
nautical mile) sea gap. The
Channel Tunnel, near
Folkestone, directly links England to the
European
mainland. The English/
French border is halfway along the tunnel.
Most of England consists of rolling hills, but it's more mountainous in the north with a chain of low mountains, the
Pennines, dividing east and west. The dividing line between terrain types is usually indicated by the
Tees-Exe line. There is also an area of flat, low-lying marshland in the east,
the Fens, much of which has been drained for agricultural use.
The list of England's largest cities is much debated because in
English the normal meaning of
city is "a continuously built-up urban area"; these are hard to define and various other definitions are preferred by some people to boost the ranking of their own city. For the official definition of a UK (and therefore English) city, see
City status in the United Kingdom. However, by any definition
London is by far the largest urban area in England and one of the largest and busiest cities in the world.
Birmingham is the second largest, both in terms of the city itself and its urban conurbation. A number of other cities, mainly in central and northern England, are of substantial size and influence. These include:
Manchester,
Leeds,
Liverpool,
Newcastle,
Sheffield,
Bristol,
Coventry,
Bradford,
Leicester,
Nottingham and
Hull.
The largest natural harbour in England is at
Poole, on the south-central coast. Some regard it as the second largest harbour in the world, after Sydney, Australia, although this fact is disputed (see
harbours for a list of other large natural harbours).
Climate
England has a
temperate climate, with plentiful
rainfall all year round, though the
seasons are quite variable in
temperature. However, temperatures rarely fall below −5 °C (23 °F) or rise above 30 °C (86 °F). The prevailing
wind is from the south-west, bringing mild and wet weather to England regularly from the Atlantic Ocean. It is driest in the
east and warmest in the
south, which is closest to the
European
mainland.
Snowfall can occur in Winter and early Spring, though it isn't that common away from high ground.
The highest temperature ever recorded in England is 38.5
°C (101.3
°F) on
August 10,
2003 at
Brogdale, near
Faversham, in
Kent. The lowest temperature ever recorded in England is −26.1 °C (−15.0
°F) on
January 10,
1982 at
Edgmond, near
Newport, in
Shropshire.
Major rivers
Major conurbations
The largest cities in England are much debated but according to the urban area populations (continuous built-up areas) these would be the fifteen largest conurbations (population figures taken from 2001 census):
| Greater London Urban Area |
8,278,251 |
West Midlands conurbation |
2,284,093 |
Greater Manchester Urban Area |
2,240,230 |
West Yorkshire Urban Area |
1,499,465 |
Tyneside |
879,996 |
Liverpool Urban Area |
816,216 |
Nottingham Urban Area |
666,358 |
Sheffield Urban Area |
640,720 |
Greater Bristol |
551,066 |
Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton |
461,181 |
Portsmouth Urban Area |
442,252 |
Leicester Urban Area |
441,213 |
Bournemouth Urban Area |
383,713 |
Reading/Wokingham Urban Area |
369,804 |
Teesside |
365,323 |
Economics
England's economy is the second largest in Europe and the fifth largest in the world. It follows the
Anglo-Saxon economic model. England's economy is the largest of the four economies of the United Kingdom, with 100 of Europe's 500 largest corporations based in London. As part of the United Kingdom, England is a major centre of world economics. One of the world's most highly industrialised countries, England is a leader in the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors and in key technical industries, particularly
aerospace, the
arms industry and the manufacturing side of the
software industry.
London exports mainly manufactured goods and imports materials such as
petroleum,
tea,
wool,
raw sugar,
timber,
butter,
metals, and
meat, exporting over 30,000 tonnes of beef last year, worth around £75,000,000, with
France,
Italy,
Greece, the
Netherlands,
Belgium and
Spain being the biggest importers of beef from England.
The central bank of the United Kingdom, which sets interest rates and implements monetary policy, is the
Bank of England in London. London is also home to the
London Stock Exchange, the main
stock exchange in the UK and the largest in Europe.
London, is one of the international leaders in
finance and the largest financial centre in
Europe.
Traditional heavy and manufacturing industries have declined sharply in England in recent decades, as they've in the United Kingdom as a whole. At the same time,
service industries have grown in importance. For example,
tourism is the sixth largest industry in the UK, contributing 76 billion pounds to the economy. It employs 1,800,000 full-time equivalent people — 6.1% of the working population (2002 figures). The largest centre for tourism is London, which attracts millions of international tourists every year.
As part of the United Kingdom, England's official
currency is the
Pound Sterling (also known as the
British pound or GBP).
Demography
With 50,431,700 inhabitants, or 84% of the UK's total, England is the most populous nation in the United Kingdom; as well as being the most ethnically diverse. England would have the fourth largest population in the European Union and would be the 25th largest
country by population if it were a sovereign state.
The country's population is 'aging', with a declining percentage of the population under age 16 and a rising one of over 65. Population continues to rise and in every year since 1901, with the exception of 1976, there have been more births than deaths. England is one of the most densely-populated countries in Europe, with 383 people per square kilometre (992/sq mi), making it second only to the
Netherlands.
The generally accepted view is that the ethnic background of the English populace, before 19th- and 20th century immigration, was a mixed European one deriving from historical waves of
Celtic,
Roman,
Anglo-Saxon,
Norse, and
Norman invasions, along with the possible survival of
pre-Celtic ancestry.
The economic prosperity of England has also made it a destination for economic migrants from
Scotland,
Wales,
Northern Ireland and the
Republic of Ireland. This was particularly true during the
Industrial Revolution.
Since the fall of the
British Empire, many denizens of former colonies have migrated to Britain including the
Indian sub-continent and the British
Caribbean. A
BBC-published report of the 2001 census, by the
Institute for Public Policy Research stated that the vast majority of immigrants settled in London and the South East of England. The largest groups of residents born in other countries were from the
Republic of Ireland,
India,
Pakistan,
Germany, and the
Caribbean. Though Germany was high on the list, this was mainly the result of children being born to British forces personnel stationed in that country.
About half the population increase between 1991 and 2001 was due to
foreign-born immigration. In 2004 the number of people who became British citizens rose to a record 140,795 - a rise of 12% on the previous year. This number had risen dramatically since 2000. The overwhelming majority of new citizens come from
Africa (32%) and
Asia (40%), the largest three groups being people from
Pakistan,
India and
Somalia. One in five babies in the UK are born to immigrant mothers, according to official statistics released in 2007 that also show the highest
birth rates in Britain for 26 years. 21.9% of all births in the UK in 2006 were to mothers born outside the United Kingdom compared to just 12.8% in 1995.
In 2005, an estimated 565,000 migrants arrived to live in the UK for at least a year, while 380,000 people emigrated from the UK for a year or more, with
Australia,
Spain and
France most popular destinations. Largest group of arrivals were people from the
Indian subcontinent who accounted for two-thirds of net immigration, mainly fuelled by family reunion.
The
European Union allows free movement between the member states. While
France and
Germany put in place controls to curb Eastern European migration, the UK (along with Ireland) didn't impose restrictions. Following
Poland's entry into the EU in May 2004 it's estimated that by the start of 2007 about 375,000
Poles have registered to work in the UK, although the total Polish population in the UK is believed to be 750,000. Many Poles work in seasonal occupations and a large number is likely to move back and forth including between Ireland and other EU Western nations. A quarter of
Eastern European migrants, often young and well-educated, plan to stay in Britain permanently. Most of them had originally intended to go home but have changed their minds after living there.
Culture
England has a vast and influential
culture that encompasses elements both old and new. The modern culture of England is sometimes difficult to identify and separate clearly from the culture of the wider United Kingdom, so intertwined are its composite nations. However, the traditional and historic culture of England is more clearly defined.
English Heritage is a governmental body with a broad remit of managing the historic sites, artefacts and environments of England. London's
British Museum,
British Library and
National Gallery contain some of the finest collections in the world.
The English have played a significant role in the development of the
arts and
sciences. Many of the most important figures in the history of modern western scientific and philosophical thought were either born in, or at one time or other resided in, England. Major English thinkers of international significance include scientists such as
Sir Isaac Newton,
Francis Bacon,
Charles Darwin and New Zealand-born
Ernest Rutherford, philosophers such as
John Locke,
John Stuart Mill,
Bertrand Russell and
Thomas Hobbes, and economists such as
David Ricardo, and
John Maynard Keynes.
Karl Marx wrote most of his important works, including
Das Kapital, whilst in exile in Manchester, and the team that developed the first atomic bomb began their work in England, under the wartime codename tube alloys.
Architecture
England has played a significant part in the advancement of Western
architecture. It is home to some of the finest mediaeval
castles and forts in the world, including
Warwick Castle, the
Tower of London and
Windsor Castle (the largest inhabited
castle in the world and the oldest in continuous occupation). It is also known for its numerous grand country houses, and for its many mediaeval and later churches and cathedrals.
English architects have contributed to a number of styles over the centuries, including
Tudor architecture,
English Baroque, the
Georgian style and Victorian movements such as
Gothic Revival. Among the best-known contemporary English architects are
Norman Foster and
Richard Rogers.
Cuisine
Although highly-regarded in the Middle Ages, English cuisine later became a source of fun among Britain's French and European neighbours, being viewed until the late twentieth century as crude and unsophisticated by comparison with continental tastes. However, with the influx of non-European immigrants (particularly those of south and east Asian origins) from the 1950s onwards, the English diet was transformed. Indian and Chinese cuisine in particular were absorbed into English culinary life, with restaurants and takeaways appearing in almost every town in England, and 'going for an Indian' becoming a regular part of English social life. A distinct hybrid food style composed of dishes of Asian origin, but adapted to British tastes, emerged and was subsequently exported to other parts of the world. Many of the well-known Indian dishes in the western world, such as
Tikka Masala and
Balti, are in fact Anglo-Indian dishes of this sort.
Chicken Tikka Masala is often jokingly referred to as England's national dish, in a reference both to its English origins and to its enormous popularity.
Dishes forming part of the old tradition of English food include:
Engineering and innovation
As birthplace of the
Industrial Revolution, England was home to many significant inventors during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Famous English engineers include
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, best known for the creation of the
Great Western Railway, a series of famous
steamships, and numerous important
bridges, hence revolutionising public transport and modern day engineering.
Other notable English figures in the fields of engineering and innovation include:
Richard Arkwright — inventor of the first industrial spinning machine
Charles Babbage — inventor of the first computer (in the nineteenth century)
Tim Berners-Lee — inventor of the World Wide Web, http, html, and many of the other technologies on which the Web is based
James Blundell — who performed the first blood transfusion
Hubert Cecil Booth — inventor of the Vacuum cleaner
Edwin Beard Budding — inventor of the lawnmower
George Cayley — inventor of the seat belt
Christopher Cockerell — inventor of the hovercraft
John Dalton — pioneer of atomic theory
James Dyson — inventor of the Dual Cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner
Michael Faraday — inventor of the electric motor
Thomas Fowler — inventor of the thermosiphon
Robert Hooke — Hooke's law of elasticity
E. Purnell Hooley — inventor of tarmac
Thomas Newcomen — inventor of the first practical steam engine
Isaac Newton — defining Universal gravitation, Newtonian mechanics, Infinitesimal calculus
Stephen Perry — inventor of the rubber band
Thomas Savery — inventor of the steam engine
Percy Shaw — inventor of the "cat's eye" road safety device
George Stephenson and Robert Stephenson — railway pioneers (father and son)
Joseph Swan — developer of the light bulb
Richard Trevithick — builder of the earliest steam locomotive
Jethro Tull — inventor of the seed drill
Alan Turing and Tommy Flowers — inventors of the modern computer and its associated concepts and technologies
Frank Whittle — inventor of the jet engine
Joseph Whitworth — inventor of many of the modern techniques and technologies of precision engineering
Folklore
English folklore is rich and diverse. Many of the land's oldest legends share themes and sources with the Celtic folklore of Wales, Scotland and Ireland, a typical example being the legend of Herne the Hunter, which shares many similarities with the traditional Welsh legend of Gwyn ap Nudd.
Successive waves of pre-Norman invaders and settlers, from the Romans onwards, via Saxons, Jutes, Angles, Norse to the Norman Conquest have all influenced the myth and legend of England. Some tales, such as that of The Lambton Wyrm show a distinct Norse influence, whilst others, particularly some of the events and characters associated with the Arthurian legends show a distinct Romano-gaulic slant.
The most famous body of English folk-tales concerns the legends of King Arthur, although it would be wrong to regard these stories as purely English in origin as they also concern Wales and, to a lesser extent, Ireland and Scotland. They should therefore be considered as part of the folklore of the British Isles as a whole.
Post-Norman stories include the tales of Robin Hood, which exists in many forms, and stories of other folk heroes such as Hereward the Wake and Fulk FitzWarin who, although being based on historical characters, have grown to become legends in their own right.
Finally, other historical figures come to have legends associated with them (such as Sir Francis Drake and 'Drake's Drum'). These figures then move out of the realm of historical fact and into the realm of mythology.
Literature
The English language boasts a rich and prominent literary heritage. England has produced a wealth of significant literary figures including playwrights William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Webster, as well as writers Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, J.K. Rowling, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley, HG Wells, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, DH Lawrence, EM Forster, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell and Harold Pinter. Others, such as J.K. Rowling, Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie have been among the best-selling novelists of the last century.
Among the poets, Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sydney, Thomas Kyd, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, John Keats, John Milton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, T.S. Eliot (American-born, but a British subject from 1927) and many others remain read and studied around the world. Among men of letters, Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt and George Orwell are some of the most famous. England continues to produce writers working in all branches of literature, and in a wide range of styles; contemporary English literary writers attracting international attention include Martin Amis, Julian Barnes and Zadie Smith.
Music
Composers from England have not achieved recognition as broad as that earned by their literary counterparts, and, particularly during the nineteenth century, were overshadowed in international reputation by other European composers; however, many works of earlier composers such as Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, and Henry Purcell are still frequently performed throughout the world today. A revival of England's musical status began during the twentieth century with the prominence of composers such as Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, William Walton, Eric Coates, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frederick Delius and Benjamin Britten.
In popular music, however, English bands and solo artists have been cited as the most influential and best-selling musicians of all time. Acts such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Elton John, and The Rolling Stones are amongst the biggest selling in the world. England is also credited with being the birthplace of many musical genres and movements such as hard rock, British invasion, heavy metal, Britpop, glam rock, drum and bass, grindcore, progressive rock, punk rock, gothic rock, shoegazing, acid house, UK garage, Trip Hop and Dubstep.
Science and philosophy
Prominent English figures from the field of science and mathematics include Sir Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, J. J. Thomson, Charles Babbage, Charles Darwin, Stephen Hawking, Christopher Wren, Alan Turing, Francis Crick, Joseph Lister, Tim Berners-Lee, Andrew Wiles and Richard Dawkins. Some experts claim that the earliest concept of a Metric system was invented by John Wilkins, first secretary of the Royal Society in 1668.
England played an important role in the development of Western philosophy, particularly during the Enlightenment. Jeremy Bentham, leader of the Philosophical Radicals, and his school are recognised as the men who unknowingly laid down the doctrines for Socialism. Bentham's impact on English law is also considerable. Aside from Bentham, major English philosophers include Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, Bernard Williams and Bertrand Russell.
Sport
A number of modern sports were codified in England during the nineteenth century, among them cricket, rugby union and rugby league, football (soccer), tennis and badminton. Of these, association football, rugby and cricket remain the country's most popular spectator sports. England contains more UEFA 5 star and 4 star rated stadia than any other country, and is home to some of the sport's top clubs. Among these, Aston Villa, Liverpool FC, Manchester United and Nottingham Forest have won the European Cup. The England national football team are considered one of the game's superpowers (currently ranked 9th by FIFA and 7th by Elo), having won the World Cup in 1966 when it was hosted in England. Since then, however, they've failed to reach a final of a major international tournament, though they reached the semi-finals of the World Cup in 1990 and the quarter-finals in 2002 and 2006 and Euro 2004.
The England national rugby union team and England cricket team are often among the best performing in the world, with the rugby union team winning the 2003 Rugby World Cup, and the cricket team winning The Ashes in 2005, and being ranked the second best Test nation in the world. Rugby union clubs such as Leicester Tigers, London Wasps and the Northampton Saints have had success in the Europe-wide Heineken Cup. At rugby league, the England national rugby league team are to compete more regularly after 2006, when England will become a full test nation in lieu of the Great Britain national rugby league team, when that team is retired after the 2006 Rugby League Tri-Nations. The English Rugby Team is currently playing in the 2007 World Cup in France and have reached the final after an awesome victory over Australia in the quarter-final and a nail biting win over hosts France in Paris in the semi-final.
Sport England is the governing body responsible for distributing funds and providing strategic guidance for sporting activity in England.
The 2012 Summer Olympics are to be hosted by London, England. It will run from 26 July to 12 August 2012. London will become the first city to have hosted the modern Olympic Games three times, having previously done so in 1908 and 1948.
Language
English language
As its name suggests, the English language, today spoken by hundreds of millions of people around the world, originated as the language of England, where it remains the principal tongue today (although not officially designated as such). An Indo-European language in the Anglo-Frisian branch of the Germanic family, it's closely related to Scots and Frisian. As the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms merged into England, "Old English" emerged; some of its literature and poetry has survived.
Used by aristocracy and commoners alike before the Norman Conquest (1066), English was displaced in cultured contexts under the new regime by the Norman French language of the new Anglo-Norman aristocracy. Its use was confined primarily to the lower social classes while official business was conducted in a mixture of Latin and French. Over the following centuries, however, English gradually came back into fashion among all classes and for all official business except certain traditional ceremonies, some of which survive to this day. But Middle English, as it had by now become, showed many signs of French influence, both in vocabulary and spelling. During the Renaissance, many words were coined from Latin and Greek origins; and more recent years, Modern English has extended this custom, being always remarkable for its far-flung willingness to incorporate foreign-influenced words.
It is most commonly accepted that — thanks in large part to the British Empire, and now the United States — the English language is now the world's unofficial lingua franca, while English common law is also the foundation of many legal systems throughout the English-speaking countries of the world. English language learning and teaching is an important economic sector, including language schools, tourism spending, and publishing houses.
Additional languages
UK legislation doesn't recognise any language as being official, but English is the only language used in England for general official business. The other national languages of the UK (Welsh, Irish, Scots and Scottish Gaelic) are confined to their respective nations, except Welsh to some degree.
The only non-Anglic native spoken language in England is the Cornish language, a Celtic language spoken in Cornwall, which became extinct in the nineteenth century but has been revived and is spoken in various degrees of fluency, currently by around 2000 people. This has no official status (unlike Welsh) and isn't required for official use, but is nonetheless supported by national and local government under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Cornwall County Council has produced a draft strategy to develop these plans. There is, however, no programme as yet for public bodies to actively promote the language. Scots is spoken by some adjacent to the Anglo-Scottish Border, and Welsh is still spoken by some natives around Oswestry, Shropshire, on the Welsh border.
Most deaf people within England speak British sign language (BSL), a sign language native to Britain. The British Deaf Association estimates that 250,000 people throughout the UK speak BSL as their first or preferred language, but doesn't give statistics specific to England. Neither Cornish nor BSL are official languages of the UK and most British government departments and hospitals have limited facilities for deaf people. The BBC broadcasts several of its programmes with BSL interpreters.
Different languages from around the world, especially from the former British Empire and the Commonwealth of Nations, have been brought to England by immigrants. Many of these are widely spoken within ethnic minority communities, with Hindi, Bengali, Sinhala, Tamil, Punjabi, Urdu, Polish, Greek, Turkish and Cantonese being the most common languages that people living in Britain consider their first language. These are often used by official bodies to communicate with the relevant sections of the community, particularly in big cities, but this occurs on an "as needed" basis rather than as the result of specific legislative ordinances.
Other languages have also traditionally been spoken by minority populations in England, including Romany.
Despite the relatively small size of the nation, there are a many distinct English regional accents. Those with particularly strong accents may not be easily understood elsewhere in the country. Use of foreign non-standard varieties of English (such as Caribbean English) is also increasingly widespread, mainly because of the effects of immigration.
Religion
Due to immigration in the past decades, there's an enormous diversity of religious belief in England, as well as a growing percentage that have no religious affiliation. Levels of attendance in various denominations have begun to decline. England today is largely a secular country. Although the following percentages : Christianity: 71.6%, Islam: 3.1%, Hindu: 1.1%, Sikh: 0.7%, Jewish: 0.5%, and Buddhist: 0.3%, No Faith: 22.3%., the EU Eurobarometer poll of 2005 shows that only 38% of people in the UK believe in a god and that religious belief is on the decline.
Christianity
Christianity reached England through missionaries from Scotland and from Continental Europe; the era of St. Augustine (the first Archbishop of Canterbury) and the Celtic Christian missionaries in the north (notably St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert). The Synod of Whitby in 664 ultimately led to the English Church being fully part of Roman Catholicism. Early English Christian documents surviving from this time include the seventh century illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels and the historical accounts written by the Venerable Bede. England has many early cathedrals, most notably York Minster (1080), Durham Cathedral (1093) and Salisbury Cathedral (1220), In 1536, the Church was split from Rome over the issue of the divorce of King Henry VIII from Catherine of Aragon. The split led to the emergence of a separate ecclesiastical authority, and later the influence of the Reformation, resulting in the Church of England and Anglicanism. Unlike the other three constituent countries of the UK, the Church of England is an established church (although the Church of Scotland is a 'national church' recognised in law).
The sixteenth century break with Rome under the reign of King Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries had major consequences for the Church (as well as for politics). The Church of England remains the largest Christian church in England; it's part of the Anglican communion. Many of the Church of England's cathedrals and parish churches are historic buildings of significant architectural importance.
Other major Christian Protestant denominations in England include the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church and the United Reformed Church. Smaller denominations, but not insignificant, include the Religious Society of Friends (the "Quakers") and the Salvation Army — both founded in England. There are also Afro-Caribbean Churches, especially in the London area.
The Roman Catholic Church re-established a hierarchy in England in the nineteenth century. Attendances were considerably boosted by immigration, especially from Ireland and more recently Poland.
Other religions
Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, immigration from many colonial countries, often from South Asia and the Middle East have resulted in a considerable growth in Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism in England. Cities and towns with large Muslim communities include Birmingham, Blackburn, 
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