Jump to content

Portal:United Kingdom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The United Kingdom Portal

Flag of the United Kingdom
Flag of the United Kingdom
Coat of Arms for the United Kingdom
Coat of Arms for the United Kingdom
Map of the United Kingdom in the British Isles.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The UK includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and most of the smaller islands within the British Isles, making up a total area of 94,354 square miles (244,376 km2). Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, and the Irish Sea. The United Kingdom had an estimated population of over 68.2 million people in 2023. The capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom is London, whose wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 14.9 million. The cities of Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast are the national capitals of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, respectively.

The lands of the UK have been inhabited continuously since the Neolithic. In AD 43, the Roman conquest of Britain began; the Roman departure was followed by Anglo-Saxon settlement. In 1066, the Normans conquered England. With the end of the Wars of the Roses, the English state stabilised and began to grow in power, resulting by the 16th century in the annexation of Wales, the domination of Scotland, and the establishment of the British Empire. Over the course of the 17th century, the role of the British monarchy was reduced, particularly as a result of the English Civil War. In 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland united under the Treaty of Union to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Acts of Union 1800 incorporated the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Most of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922 as the Irish Free State, and the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 created the present United Kingdom.

The UK became the first industrialised country and was the world's foremost power for the majority of the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly during the "Pax Britannica" between 1815 and 1914. The British Empire was the leading economic power for most of the 19th century, a position supported by its agricultural prosperity, its role as a dominant trading nation, a massive industrial capacity, significant technological achievements, and the rise of 19th-century London as the world's principal financial centre. At its height in the 1920s, the British Empire encompassed almost a quarter of the world's landmass and population, and was the largest empire in history. However, its involvement in the First World War and the Second World War damaged Britain's economic power and a global wave of decolonisation led to the independence of most British colonies. (Full article...)

Featured article

Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion is a 1944 triptych painted by the Irish-born artist Francis Bacon. The work is based on the Eumenides, or Furies, of Aeschylus' The Oresteia, and depicts three writhing anthropomorphic creatures set against a flat orange background. The triptych was executed in oil paint and pastel on Sundeala fibre board, and was completed within the space of two weeks. The work summarizes themes explored in Bacon's previous paintings, including his examination of Picasso's biomorphs, and his interpretations of the Crucifixion and the Greek Furies. Bacon did not realize his intention to paint a large crucifixion scene and place the figures at the foot of the cross. The Three Studies triptych is generally considered Bacon's first mature piece; he regarded his works before the triptych as irrelevant, and throughout his life he tried to suppress their appearance in the art market. When the painting was first exhibited in 1945, it caused a sensation, and helped to establish him as one of England's foremost post-war painters. Commenting on the cultural significance of Three Studies, the critic John Russell observed in 1971 that "there was painting in England before the Three Studies, and painting after them, and no one ... can confuse the two." (Full article...)

Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825) was a prominent eighteenth-century English poet, essayist, and children's author. A "woman of letters" who published in multiple genres, Barbauld had a successful writing career at a time when female professional writers were rare. She was a noted teacher at the celebrated Palgrave Academy and an innovative children's writer; her famous primers provided a model for pedagogy for more than a century. Her essays demonstrated that it was possible for a woman to be publicly engaged in politics, and other women authors emulated her. Even more importantly, her poetry was foundational to the development of Romanticism in England. Barbauld was also a literary critic, and her anthology of eighteenth-century British novels helped establish the canon as we know it today. Barbauld's literary career ended abruptly in 1812 with the publication of her poem Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, which criticized Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars. The vicious reviews shocked Barbauld and she published nothing else within her lifetime. Her reputation was further damaged when many of the Romantic poets she had inspired in the heyday of the French Revolution turned against her in their later, more conservative, years. Barbauld was remembered only as a pedantic children's writer during the nineteenth century, and largely forgotten during the twentieth century, but the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1980s renewed interest in her works and restored her place in literary history. (Full article...)

The following are images from various United Kingdom-related articles on Wikipedia.

Subportals


Related portals

WikiProjects

Things you can do

Visit the British Wikipedians' notice board.
The noticeboard is the central forum for information and discussion on editing related to the United Kingdom.
Comment at the British deletion sorting page.
This page lists deletion discussions on topics relating to the United Kingdom.

Did you know - load new batch

In the news

Wikinews UK

11 December 2024 – 2024 United Kingdom farmers' protests
Hundreds of tractors block Whitehall in protest of Labour government changes to agricultural inheritance tax. (The Independent)
7 December 2024 – 2024–25 European windstorm season
Two people are killed by falling trees in England and more than 1.5 million people experience power outages in Ireland and the United Kingdom as Storm Darragh hits the British Isles. (BBC News) (Sky News)
6 December 2024 – 2024–25 European windstorm season
Millions of people receive emergency alerts in the United Kingdom as Storm Darragh prepares to make landfall over the British Isles. (BBC News)
29 November 2024 –
The United Kingdom House of Commons votes 330–275 to pass the second reading of the Terminally Ill Adults Bill, marking the first time the Parliament has voted in favour of assisted dying. The bill will now need to pass several more stages before becoming law. (The Guardian)
27 November 2024 –
The City of London Corporation proposes a bill to close the 19th-century Billingsgate Fish Market in Billingsgate and Smithfield Meat Market in Smithfield, City of London, United Kingdom, by 2028. (BBC News) (AP)
26 November 2024 – 2021–present United Kingdom cost-of-living crisis
Multinational car manufacturing company Stellantis announces that it will close its van-production factory in Luton, England, putting 1,100 jobs at risk, citing the UK's economic conditions and the government's zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate as reasons for its closure. (The Guardian)

Categories

Category puzzle
Category puzzle
Select [►] to view subcategories

Other UK-connected Wikipedias

Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Discover Wikipedia using portals