12. National sports in the uk.

Sport in the United Kingdom plays an important role in British culture, and many people make an emotional investment in their favourite spectator sports. The most popular sport is association football, except in Northern Ireland, where Gaelic games are the most popular sports, and Wales, where rugby union is generally perceived from outside as being the national sport, although there are more registered football clubs than rugby clubs. Cricket is popular in England and Wales, but is less popular in the other home nations. Rugby union and rugby league are the other major team sports, with union generally more popular in the south of England and league traditionally associated with the north. Major individual sports include athletics, golf, motorsport, and horseracing. Tennis is the highest profile sport for the two weeks of the Wimbledon Championships, but otherwise struggles to hold its own in the country of its birth. Many other sports are also played and followed to a lesser degree. The United Kingdom has given birth to a range of major international sports including: Association football, rugby (league and union), cricket, golf, tennis, badminton, squash, rounders, hockey, boxing, snooker, billiards and curling. It has also played a key role in the development of sports such as Sailing and Formula One.

13. British Literature (modern writers).

The major lyric poet of the first decades of the 20th century was Thomas Hardy, who concentrated on poetry after the harsh response to his last novel, Jude the Obscure.The most widely popular writer of the early years of the 20th century was arguably Rudyard Kipling, a highly versatile writer of novels, short stories and poems, notably The Jungle Book, often based on his experiences in British India. Kipling's inspirational poem "If" is a national favourite. Kenneth Grahame wrote children's classic The Wind in the Willows. Garden at Great Maytham Hall in Kent inspired Frances Hodgson Burnett novel The Secret GardenFrom around 1910, the Modernist Movement began to influence English literature. Whereas their Victorian predecessors had usually been happy to cater to mainstream middle-class taste, 20th century writers often felt alienated from it, and responded by writing more intellectually challenging works or by pushing the boundaries of acceptable content.Major poets of this period in Britain included American-born T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Irishman William Butler Yeats. Free verse and other stylistic innovations came to the forefront in this era.The experiences of the First World War were reflected in the work of war poets such as Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Isaac Rosenberg, Edmund Blunden and Siegfried Sassoon. Following the Arab Revolt, T. E. Lawrence "Lawrence of Arabia" autobiographical account in Seven Pillars of Wisdom.One of the most significant English writers of this period was George Orwell. An acclaimed essayist and novelist, Orwell's works are considered among the most important social and political commentaries of the 20th century.Major fantasy novelists C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia) and J. R. R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings), were leading figures in the English faculty at Oxford University and in the informal Oxford literary group known as the "Inklings".Agatha Christie was an English crime writer of novels, short stories and plays, best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays. Her works, particularly featuring detectives Hercule Poirot or Miss Jane Marple, have given her the title the 'Queen of Crime' and made her one of the most important and innovative writers in the development of the genre, with some of her most famous works being Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile