Comprehension check

I. Look through the text and answer the following questions:

1. What are the functions of the monarch?

2. How can you explain the phrase "The Queen reigns but does not rule"?

3. What rituals are closely connected with the Queen?

4. What is one of the most important duties of the Queen?

II. Match these words with their meanings:

Descend Require Unity Charity Decrease

• a situation in which a group of people or countries work together for a particular purpose

• the process of reducing something, going down to a lower level

• an organization that collects money or goods in order to help people who are poor, sick

• to be related to someone who lived a long time ago

• officially demand to do something because of a law or rule

III. Complete the sentences on the basis of the text:

1. The function of the monarch progressively decreased because...

2. As a source of justice the Queen can...

3. In order to be in touch with the public the monarch...

4. Being an inheritor of a continuous tradition...

5. One of the most important duties the Queen performs...

IV. Find the information about some prominent monarch in British history and make a report about him.

English Traditions and Ways

Pre-reading activity

1. What English traditions do you know?

2. What traditions are considered to be purely Russian?

London has preserved its old ceremonies and traditions to a greater extent than any other city in England. Most of these traditions have been kept up without interruption since the thirteenth century.

Foreigners coming to London are impressed by quite a num­ber of ceremonies, which seem to be incompatible with the mod­ern traffic and technical conditions of a highly developed country. Uniforms are rather characteristic of this fact. When one sees the warders at the Tower of London with their funny hats and unusual dresses with royal monograms, one feels carried back to the age of Queen Elizabeth I.

Even in the unromantic everyday life of English businessmen we can see the same formal traditions. In the City of London there may be seen a number of men in top-hats. These are the bank messengers who had to put on these hats according to traditions. The same tradition makes the Eton boys (the boys of Eton College which was founded in 1440 by Henry VI) put on a silk hat, a very short jacket and long trousers.

All of you, of course, have seen English films and noticed official black dresses and white wigs of judges and advocates, though wigs have not been used for nearly two hundred years in other countries.

One of the most impressive and popular ceremonies is "Changing the Guard", which takes place at Buckingham Palace every day, including Sunday, at 11.30. The uniform of the guards is extremely coloured: red tunics, blue trousers and bearskin caps, and they always attract London sightseer.

Another formal display is the "Ceremony of Keys" which takes place every night at 9.53 p. m. when the Chief Warder of the Tower of London lights a candle lantern and carrying the keys makes his way with the Escort to the gates of the Tower and locks them. This ceremony takes place every night without interruption. It is said that on the night of April 16, 1941 air bombing stopped the ceremony, knocking out members of the Escort. Despite this the duty was completed.

Strange as they may seem to a modern European or Ameri­can, nobody in London sees anything remarkable in these old tra­ditions which mix harmoniously with city everyday life.

Almost every nation has a reputation of some kind. The French are supposed to be amorous, gay, fond of champagne; the

Germans dull, formal, efficient, fond of military uniforms and parades; the Americans boastful, energetic, gregarious and vulgar. The English are reputed to be cold, reserved, rather haughty people who do not yell in the street, make love in public or change their governments as often as they change their underclothes. They are steady, easy-going, and fond of sports.

The foreigner's view of the English is often based on the type of Englishman he has met travelling abroad. Since these are largely members of the upper and middle classes, it is obvious that their behaviour cannot be taken as general for the whole people. There are, however, certain kinds of behaviour, manners and cus­toms which are peculiar to England.

The English are a nation of stay-at-homes. There is no place like home, they say. And when the man is not working he with­draws from the world to the company of his wife and children and busies himself with the affairs of the home. "The Englishman's home is his castle" is a saying known all over the world; and it is true that English people prefer small houses, built to house one family, perhaps with a small garden. But nowadays the shortage of building land and inflated land values mean that more and more blocks of flats are being built and fewer detached and semide­tached houses, especially by the local councils.

The fire is the focus of the English home. What do other nations sit round? The answer is they don't. They go out to cafes or sit round the cocktail bar. For the English it is the open fire, the toasting fork and the ceremony of English tea. Even when central heating is installed it is kept so low in the Eng­lish home that Americans and Russians get chilblains, as the English get nervous headaches from stuffiness in theirs.

Foreigners often picture the Englishman dressed in tweeds, smoking a pipe, striding across the open countryside with his dog at his heels. This is a picture of the aristocratic Englishman during his holidays on his country estate. Since most of the open country­side is privately owned there isn't much left for the others to stride across. The average Englishman often lives and dies without ever having possessed a tweed suit.

Apart from the conservatism on a grand scale which the attitude to the monarchy typifies, England is full of small-scale and local conservatisms, some of them of a highly individual or particular character. Regiments in the army, municipal corporations, school and societies have their own private traditions which command strong loyalties. Such groups have customs of their private customs as differentiating them, as groups, from the rest of the world.

Most English people have been slow to adopt rational reforms such as the metric system, which came into general use in 1975. They have suffered inconvenience from adhering to old ways, be­cause they did not want the trouble of adapting themselves to new. All the same, several of the most notorious symbols of conserva­tism are being abandoned. The twenty-four clock was at last adopted for railway timetables in the l960-s though not for most other timetables, such as radio programs. In 1966 it was decided that decimal money would become regular form in 1971 though even in this matter conservatism triumphed when the Government decided to keep the pound sterling as the basic unit, with its one-hundredth part an over-large "new penny".