The
culture of the United Kingdom has been influenced by many factors including: the nation's island status; its
history as a western liberal democracy and a major power; as well as being a
political union of four countries with each preserving elements of distinctive traditions, customs and symbolism. As a result of the
British Empire, British influence can be observed in the
language,
culture and
legal systems of many of its former colonies; including Australia, Canada,
India,
Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States. The
substantial cultural influence of the United Kingdom has led it to be
described as a "cultural superpower."
[361][362]
Literature
'British literature' refers to literature associated with the United Kingdom, the
Isle of Man
and the Channel Islands. Most British literature is in the English
language. In 2005, some 206,000 books were published in the United
Kingdom and in 2006 it was the
largest publisher of books in the world.
[363]
The English playwright and poet
William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time,
[364][365][366] and his contemporaries
Christopher Marlowe and
Ben Jonson have also been held in continuous high esteem. More recently the playwrights
Alan Ayckbourn,
Harold Pinter,
Michael Frayn,
Tom Stoppard and
David Edgar have combined elements of surrealism, realism and radicalism.
Notable pre-modern and early-modern English writers include
Geoffrey Chaucer (14th century),
Thomas Malory (15th century),
Sir Thomas More (16th century), and
John Milton (17th century). In the 18th century
Daniel Defoe (author of
Robinson Crusoe) and
Samuel Richardson were pioneers of the
modern novel. In the 19th century there followed further innovation by
Jane Austen, the gothic novelist
Mary Shelley, children's writer
Lewis Carroll, the
Brontë sisters, the social campaigner
Charles Dickens, the
naturalist Thomas Hardy, the
realist George Eliot, the visionary poet
William Blake and romantic poet
William Wordsworth. 20th century English writers include: science-fiction novelist
H. G. Wells; the writers of children's classics
Rudyard Kipling,
A. A. Milne (the creator of
Winnie-the-Pooh),
Roald Dahl and
Enid Blyton; the controversial
D. H. Lawrence;
modernist Virginia Woolf; the satirist
Evelyn Waugh; the prophetic novelist
George Orwell; the popular novelists
W. Somerset Maugham and
Graham Greene; the crime writer
Agatha Christie (the
best-selling novelist of all time);
[367] Ian Fleming (the creator of
James Bond); the poets
T. S. Eliot,
Philip Larkin and
Ted Hughes; and the
fantasy writers
J. R. R. Tolkien,
C. S. Lewis and
J. K. Rowling.
Scotland's contributions include the detective writer
Arthur Conan Doyle (the creator of
Sherlock Holmes), romantic literature by
Sir Walter Scott, children's writer
J.M. Barrie, 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, was UNESCO's first worldwide
City of Literature.
[368]
Britain's oldest known poem,
Y Gododdin, was composed in
Yr Hen Ogledd (
The Old North), most likely in the late 6th century. It was written in
Cumbric or
Old Welsh and contains the earliest known reference to
King Arthur.
[369]
From around the seventh century, the connection between Wales and the
Old North was lost, and the focus of Welsh-language culture shifted to
Wales, where Arthurian legend was further developed by
Geoffrey of Monmouth.
[370] Wales's most celebrated medieval poet,
Dafydd ap Gwilym
(fl 1320–1370), composed poetry on themes including nature, religion
and especially love. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest
European poets of his age.
[371] Until the late 19th century the majority of Welsh literature was in Welsh and much of the prose was religious in character.
Daniel Owen is credited as the first Welsh-language novelist, publishing
Rhys Lewis in 1885. The best-known of the
Anglo-Welsh poets are both Thomases.
Dylan Thomas became famous on both sides of the Atlantic in the mid-20th century. The Swansea writer is remembered for his poetry – his "
Do not go gentle into that good night;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light." is one of the most quoted
couplets of English language verse – and for his 'play for voices',
Under Milk Wood. Influential
Church in Wales 'poet-priest' and
Welsh nationalist,
R. S. Thomas, was nominated for the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. Leading Welsh novelists of the twentieth century include
Richard Llewellyn and
Kate Roberts.
[372][373]
Authors of other nationalities, particularly from
Commonwealth
countries, the Republic of Ireland and the United States, 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,
Ezra Pound and more recently British authors born abroad such as
Kazuo Ishiguro and
Sir Salman Rushdie.
[374][375]
Music
The Beatles are one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands in the
history of music, selling over a billion records internationally.
Various styles of music are popular in the UK from the indigenous
folk music of
England,
Wales,
Scotland and
Northern Ireland to
heavy metal. Notable composers of classical music from the United Kingdom and the countries that preceded it include
William Byrd,
Henry Purcell,
Sir Edward Elgar,
Gustav Holst,
Sir Arthur Sullivan (most famous for working with librettist
Sir W.S. Gilbert),
Ralph Vaughan Williams and
Benjamin Britten, pioneer of modern British opera.
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is one of the foremost living composers and current
Master of the Queen's Music. The UK is also home to world-renowned symphonic orchestras and choruses such as the
BBC Symphony Orchestra and the
London Symphony Chorus. Notable conductors include
Sir Simon Rattle,
John Barbirolli and
Sir Malcolm Sargent. Some of the notable
film score composers include
John Barry,
Clint Mansell,
Mike Oldfield,
John Powell,
Craig Armstrong,
David Arnold,
John Murphy,
Monty Norman and
Harry Gregson-Williams.
George Frideric Handel, although born German, was a
naturalised British citizen[379] and some of his best works, such as
Messiah, were written in the English language.
[380] Andrew Lloyd Webber
has achieved enormous worldwide commercial success and is a prolific
composer of musical theatre, works which have dominated London's
West End for a number of years and have travelled to Broadway in New York.
[381]
The Beatles have international sales of over one billion units and are the
biggest-selling and most influential band in the history of popular music.
[376][377][378][382] Other prominent British contributors to have influenced popular music over the last 50 years include;
The Rolling Stones,
Led Zeppelin,
Pink Floyd,
Queen, the
Bee Gees, and
Elton John, all of whom have
world wide record sales of 200 million or more.
[383][384][385][386][387][388] The
Brit Awards are the
BPI's annual music awards, and some of the British recipients of the Outstanding Contribution to Music award include;
The Who,
David Bowie,
Eric Clapton,
Rod Stewart and
The Police.
[389] More recent UK music acts that have had international success include
Coldplay,
Radiohead,
Oasis,
Muse,
Spice Girls,
Amy Winehouse and
Adele.
[390]
A number of UK cities are known for their music. Acts from
Liverpool have had more UK chart number one hit singles per capita (54) than any other city worldwide.
[391] Glasgow's contribution to music was recognised in 2008 when it was named a
UNESCO City of Music, one of only three cities in the world to have this honour.
[392]
Visual art
The history of British visual art forms part of
western art history. Major British artists include: the
Romantics William Blake,
John Constable,
Samuel Palmer and
J.M.W. Turner; the
portrait painters
Sir Joshua Reynolds and
Lucian Freud; the landscape artists
Thomas Gainsborough and
L. S. Lowry; the pioneer of the
Arts and Crafts Movement William Morris; the figurative painter
Francis Bacon; the
Pop artists Peter Blake,
Richard Hamilton and
David Hockney; the collaborative duo
Gilbert and George; the
abstract artist
Howard Hodgkin; and the
sculptors Antony Gormley,
Anish Kapoor and
Henry Moore. During the late 1980s and 1990s the
Saatchi Gallery in London helped to bring to public attention a group of multi-genre artists who would become known as the "
Young British Artists":
Damien Hirst,
Chris Ofili,
Rachel Whiteread,
Tracey Emin,
Mark Wallinger,
Steve McQueen,
Sam Taylor-Wood and the
Chapman Brothers are among the better-known members of this loosely affiliated movement.
The
Royal Academy
in London is a key organisation for the promotion of the visual arts in
the United Kingdom. Major schools of art in the UK include: 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;
Goldsmiths, University of London; the
Slade School of Fine Art (part of
University College London); the
Glasgow School of Art; the
Royal College of Art; and
The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (part of the University of Oxford). The
Courtauld Institute of Art is a leading centre for the teaching of the
history of art. Important art galleries in the United Kingdom include the
National Gallery,
National Portrait Gallery,
Tate Britain and
Tate Modern (the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year).
[393]
Cinema
The United Kingdom has had a considerable influence on the history of the cinema. The British directors
Alfred Hitchcock and
David Lean are among the most critically acclaimed of all-time,
[394] with other important directors including
Charlie Chaplin,
Michael Powell,
Carol Reed and
Ridley Scott.
[395][396][397][398] Many British actors have achieved international fame and critical success, including:
Julie Andrews,
Richard Burton,
Michael Caine, Charlie Chaplin,
Sean Connery,
Vivien Leigh,
David Niven,
Laurence Olivier,
Peter Sellers and
Kate Winslet.
[399][400][401][402][403][404][405][406][407][408] Some of the most commercially successful films of all time have been produced in the United Kingdom, including the two
highest-grossing film franchises (
Harry Potter and
James Bond).
[409] Ealing Studios has a claim to being the oldest continuously working film studio in the world.
[410]
Despite a history of important and successful productions, the
industry has often been characterised by a debate about its identity and
the level of American and European influence. Many British films are
co-productions with American producers, often using both British and
American actors, and British actors feature regularly in Hollywood
films. Many successful Hollywood films have been based on British
people,
stories or events, including
Titanic,
The Lord of the Rings,
Pirates of the Caribbean, and the 'English Cycle' of Disney animated films which include,
Alice in Wonderland,
Peter Pan and
Robin Hood.
[411]
In 2009 British films grossed around $2 billion worldwide and
achieved a market share of around 7% globally and 17% in the United
Kingdom.
[412] UK box-office takings totalled £944 million in 2009, with around 173 million admissions.
[412] The
British Film Institute has produced a poll ranking of what it considers to be the 100 greatest British films of all time, the
BFI Top 100 British films.
[413] The annual
British Academy Film Awards, hosted by the
British Academy of Film and Television Arts, are the British equivalent of the
Oscars.
[414]
Media
The BBC, founded in 1922, is the UK's publicly funded radio,
television and Internet broadcasting corporation, and is the oldest and
largest broadcaster in the world. It operates numerous television and
radio stations in the UK and abroad and its domestic services are funded
by the
television licence.
[415][416] Other major players in the UK media include
ITV plc, which operates 11 of the 15 regional television broadcasters that make up the
ITV Network,
[417] and
News Corporation, which owns a number of national newspapers through
News International such as the most popular
tabloid The Sun and the longest-established daily "
broadsheet"
The Times,
[418] as well as holding a large stake in satellite broadcaster
British Sky Broadcasting.
[419]
London dominates the media sector in the UK: national newspapers and
television and radio are largely based there, although Manchester is
also a significant national media centre. Edinburgh and Glasgow, and
Cardiff, are important centres of newspaper and broadcasting production
in Scotland and Wales respectively.
[420]
The UK publishing sector, including books, directories and databases,
journals, magazines and business media, newspapers and news agencies,
has a combined turnover of around £20 billion and employs around 167,000
people.
[421]
In 2009 it was estimated that individuals viewed a mean of 3.75 hours
of television per day and 2.81 hours of radio. In that year the main
BBC
public service broadcasting
channels accounted for an estimated 28.4% of all television viewing;
the three main independent channels accounted for 29.5% and the
increasingly important other satellite and digital channels for the
remaining 42.1%.
[422] Sales of newspapers have fallen since the 1970s and in 2009 42% of people reported reading a daily national newspaper.
[423]
In 2010 82.5% of the UK population were Internet users, the highest
proportion amongst the 20 countries with the largest total number of
users in that year.
[424]
Philosophy
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, and 'Scottish
Philosophy', sometimes referred to as the '
Scottish School of Common Sense'.
[425] The most famous philosophers of British Empiricism are
John Locke,
George Berkeley and
David Hume; while
Dugald Stewart,
Thomas Reid and
William Hamilton were major exponents of the Scottish "common sense" school. Two Britons are also notable for a theory of moral philosophy
utilitarianism, first used by
Jeremy Bentham and later by
John Stuart Mill in his short work
Utilitarianism.
[426][427] Other eminent philosophers from the UK and the unions and countries that preceded it include
Duns Scotus,
John Lilburne,
Mary Wollstonecraft,
Sir Francis Bacon,
Adam Smith,
Thomas Hobbes,
William of Ockham,
Bertrand Russell and
A.J. "Freddie" Ayer. Foreign-born philosophers who settled in the UK include
Isaiah Berlin,
Karl Marx,
Karl Popper and
Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Sport
Major sports, including association football,
rugby league,
rugby union,
rowing,
boxing, badminton,
cricket, tennis,
darts
and golf, originated or were substantially developed in the United
Kingdom and the states that preceded it. A 2003 poll found that football
is the most popular
sport in the United Kingdom.
[429]
In most international competitions, separate teams represent England,
Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland usually
field a single team representing all of Ireland, with notable
exceptions including at the
Commonwealth Games and association football. (In sporting contexts, these teams can be referred to collectively as the
Home Nations.)
However there are occasions where a single sports team represents the
United Kingdom, including at the Olympics where the UK is represented by
the
Great Britain team. London was the site of the
1908 and
1948 Olympic Games, and in
2012 will become the first city to play host for a third time.
Each of the
Home Nations has its own football association, national team and
league system, though a few clubs play outside their country's respective systems for a variety of historical and logistical reasons.
England,
Scotland,
Wales and
Northern Ireland
compete as separate countries in international competition and, as a
consequence, the UK does not compete as a team in football events at the
Olympic Games.
[430] There are
proposals to have a UK team take part in the
2012 Summer Olympics but the
Scottish,
Welsh and
Northern Irish
football associations have declined to participate, fearing that it
would undermine their independent status – a fear confirmed by FIFA
president Sepp Blatter.
[431] England has been the most successful of the home nations winning the
World Cup on home soil in 1966, although there has historically been a close-fought
rivalry between England and Scotland.
Cricket was invented in England. The
England cricket team, controlled by the
England and Wales Cricket Board,
[432] is the only national team in the UK with
Test status.
Team members are drawn from the main county sides, and include both
English and Welsh players. Cricket is distinct from football and rugby
where Wales and England field separate national teams, although Wales
had fielded its own team in the past.
Irish and
Scottish players have played for England because neither
Scotland nor
Ireland have Test status and have only recently started to play in
One Day Internationals.
[433][434] Scotland, England (and Wales), and Ireland (including Northern Ireland) have competed at the
Cricket World Cup, with England reaching the finals on three occasions. There is a professional
league championship in which clubs representing 17 English counties and 1 Welsh county compete.
[435] Rugby league is a popular sport in some areas of the UK. It originates in Huddersfield and is generally played in
Northern England.
[436] A single 'Great Britain Lions' team had competed in the
Rugby League World Cup and Test match games, but this changed in 2008 when
England,
Scotland and
Ireland competed as separate nations.
[437]
Great Britain is still being retained as the full national team for
Ashes tours against Australia, New Zealand and France. The highest form
of professional rugby league in the UK and Europe is
Super League where there are 11 teams from Northern England, 1 from London, 1 from Wales and 1 from France.
Rugby union is organised on a separate basis for
England,
Scotland,
Wales and
Ireland, each has a top-ranked international team and were collectively known as the
Home Nations. The
Six Nations Championship, played between the Home Nations as well as
Italy and France, is the premier international tournament in the northern hemisphere.
[438] The
Triple Crown is awarded to any of the Home Nations who beats the other three in that tournament.
[439]
The game of
lawn tennis first originated in the city of
Birmingham between 1859 and 1865.
[440] The Championships, Wimbledon 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.
Snooker is one of the UK's popular sporting exports, with the world championships held annually in
Sheffield.
[441] In Northern Ireland
Gaelic football and
hurling
are popular team sports, both in terms of participation and spectating,
and Irish expatriates throughout the UK and the US also play them.
[442] Shinty (or
camanachd) is popular in the
Scottish Highlands.
[443]
Thoroughbred racing, which originated under
Charles II of England as the "sport of kings", is popular throughout the UK with world-famous races including the
Grand National, the
Epsom Derby,
Royal Ascot and the
Cheltenham National Hunt Festival (including the
Cheltenham Gold Cup). The UK has proved successful in the international sporting arena in
rowing. Golf is the sixth most popular sport, by participation, in the UK. Although
The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews in Scotland is the sport's home course,
[444] the world's oldest golf course is actually Musselburgh Links' Old Golf Course.
[445]
The UK 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 UK hosted the very first F1 Grand
Prix in 1950 at
Silverstone, the current location of the
British Grand Prix held each year in July. The country also hosts legs of the
World Rally Championship and has its own
touring car racing championship, the
British Touring Car Championship (BTCC).
[446]
Symbols
The
flag of the United Kingdom is the
Union Flag (also referred to as the Union Jack). It was first created in 1606 by the superimposition of the
Flag of England on the
Flag of Scotland and updated in 1801 with the addition of
Saint Patrick's Flag.
Wales is not represented in the Union Flag as Wales had been conquered
and annexed to England prior to the formation of the United Kingdom; the
possibility of redesigning the Union Flag to include representation of
Wales has not been completely ruled out.
[447] The
national anthem of the United Kingdom is "
God Save the King", with "King" replaced with "Queen" in the lyrics whenever the monarch is a woman.
Britannia is a
national personification of the United Kingdom, originating from
Roman Britain.
[448] Britannia is symbolised as a young woman with brown or golden hair wearing a
Corinthian helmet and white robes. She holds
Poseidon's three-pronged trident and a
shield,
bearing the Union Flag. Sometimes she is depicted as riding on the back
of a lion. At and since the height of the British Empire, Britannia has
often been associated with maritime dominance, as in the patriotic song
"
Rule, Britannia!". Up until 2008, the lion symbol is depicted behind Britannia on the
British fifty pence coin and on the back of the
British ten pence coin. It is also used as a symbol on the non-ceremonial flag of the
British Army. The
bulldog is sometimes used as a symbol of the United Kingdom and has been associated with
Winston Churchill's defiance of Nazi Germany.
[449] 
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