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Great London

New York has glamour, Paris is ravishingly beautiful, especially when the chestnut trees are in flower, Hong Kong is exciting, Singapore is romantic, and Sydney Harbour on a sunny day is one of the most splendid sights in the world; but for real, inimitable style, London is in a class of its own. Indeed, the best way to Find out what that indefinable quality really means, is to live for a while in London and get to know some of its unmistakable examples of style.

First, there is the world of music and the theatre, at the very pinnacle of which is the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Anyone who has seen 'Spartacus' at the Bolshoi Theatre or heard 'Tosca' at la Scala knows that most great opera houses can be exciting and unforgettable places; but from the gold embroidered royal arms on the stage curtains, to the Crush Bar manned by the fastest barmen in the world, Covent Garden glows with style. In the Royal Box - now rarely used by royalty - there is still a mirror which was installed so that a former King of England could contemplate the stage from a recumbent posture. Nowadays only a few irrepressible stylists wear evening dress for the opera, but the audiences at the Royal Opera House still cling to a certain, understated elegance, with only the occasional defiant pair of faded jeans on a Placido Domingo night. On gala evenings, with the Queen in the front row of the circle and the audience turning towards her for the National Anthem, the atmosphere is unmistakably London. The other great musical centre of London is at the South Bank Centre, a complex of theatres and concert halls which began as the first brave attempt to bring some peacetime style back to London after the Second World War. The Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room were early essays in steel and concrete modernism which have worn astonishingly well; and more recently the National Theatre has brought its own distinctive style to the South Bank of the Thames.

... For the real connoisseur of style, however, it would be difficult to beat Fortnum and  Mason, the elegant Piccadilly store, sometimes referred  to affectionately as the Queen's grocers. There are still, believe it or not, floor managers in frock coats. The food department on the ground floor may not actually stock larks' tongues in aspic, but Fortnum's would certainly obtain them for you, "and would you like them delivered to your suite at the Ritz or shall we have them put in the Rolls immediately?"

Incidentally, straight across the street (Piccadilly) from Fortnum's is the Royal Academy, home of the Summer Exhibition, which usually has terrible paintings but an abiding sense of style. The Society of Painters in Water Colour is close by; so is Albany, a discreet complex of private apartments so exclusive that royal personages have been discouraged from trying to live there; behind Fortnum's in Jermyn Street is the best cheese shop in the world; Turnbull and Asser, shirtmakers to the quality and a number of other haberdashers of impeccable style, some of whom serve champagne to customers waiting outside at the time of annual sales.

The Climate

Like the scenery, the climate is not remarkable for great extremes. The winters are mild and the summers not particularly warm, judged by Continental standards. A joker once said that the English climate was the best in the world, but the weather was terrible. The weather is certainly rather unpredictable, and yet in a way this gives it a charm of its own - which you may not appreciate if you are caught in a shower of rain without a waterproof, or find yourself driving in a thick fog along the M1.

Why is the climate so mild, even though the British Isles are situated as far north as, for example, Labrador? One reason is the Gulf Stream, and the prevailing westerly winds (or south-westerly) from the Atlantic, and another is the fact that Britain is an island.

The result is that on practically every day of the year, in every season, English people have always been able to spend part of the time out of doors. And perhaps it explains why the English are so fond of games and have invented so many different ways of amusing themselves in the open air. It certainly explains why they build their houses the way they do. Snow and frost are not the permanent feature of the winter scene to most Englishmen, nor is it ever so warm in summer that people have to take a siesta, as they do, for instance, in Italy and Spain.

The Britons do, however, tend to fool themselves a little about the prevailing mildness of the climate. Very occasionally an easterly wind from the Continent brings a cold type of weather which may persist for several days or weeks. This is when the water-pipes always freeze because of outside plumbing (a foreigner who timidly suggests that it would be more sensible to build houses with internal plumbing gets the maddening answer that it is much easier to have the water-pipes on the outside so that they are accessible when they do freeze).

By the same token, the very occasional fall of snow always seems to take the English by surprise, and studded winter tyres are practically unheard of. English homes, with their open fires, rattling sash windows and no thresholds strike the foreigner as draughty and cold, whereas the English wander about in their shirt-sleeves and make their children wear knee-stockings all the year round.

Take a look at the map of the British Isles. You will see that the country to the west and north of a line drawn very roughly from Exeter in the extreme south-west to Newcastle in the north-east, is mainly high ground, while most of the low ground lies to the south and east. You will also see that, running rather like a spine or backbone down from the Scottish Border to somewhere in the middle of England, we have a line of hills known as the Pennines. As a rule the land to the west has a much higher rainfall than the land to the east of this line of hills.

Perhaps the most typically English season is spring, when the country is putting on its gay coat of colours after the drabness of winter. Foreigners are astonished at the beauty of the parks, the greenness of the fields and soft colours that are part of this season, which is the theme of so much of England's best known poetry, from the Elizabethan "Sweet lovers love the spring" to Browning's "Oh to be in England now that April's there".

Survey of the British Geography and Life

Britain forms the greater part of the British Isles, which lie off the north-west coast of mainland Europe. The full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Great Britain comprises England, Scotland and Wales. With a total area of about 242,000 sq km, Britain is just under 1000 km long and some 500 km across in the widest part. London is the capital. Other major cities include Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. There are some 58 million people. Population density is highest in England and lowest in Scotland.

Structure: a basic highland/lowland division - NW/SE.

Mountain regions include: the Scottish Highlands  - Ben Nevis 1343m ; the Lake District - Scafell 978 m; North Wales - Snowdon 1085 m; the Pennines - a limestone "backbone" in N. England; the Jurassic limestone escarpments, esp. the Cotswolds; the chalk escarpments, esp. the Chilterns, the North and South Downs;

NB: the Weald, the Fens (N. of Cambridge), the Broads (E. of Norwich).

Climate: the climate is changeable through the seasonal cycle. Generally, the winter months from December to February are the coldest, with the shortest hours of daylight. The temperature rises through the spring months of March to May, and is highest throughout the summer months from June to August. Temperatures rarely exceed 32°C (90° F) or fall below -10°C (14° F ). London is the hottest place. The weather is mainly influenced by depressions moving eastwards across the Atlantic. The average annual rainfall is more than 1,600 mm (over 60 inches) in the highland areas of the west and north but less than 800 mm (30 inches) over the more fertile lowlands of the south and east.

Britain's lowest air temperatures -27°C was recorded at Braemar in Scotland in February 1895, whilst the highest, 37.1°C, was registered at Cheltenham south-west England, in August 1990.

Wildlife: the most widespread wild vegetation in Britain are the heather, grasses, gorse and bracken of the moorland countryside in the,highland regions. In lowland Britain, with the exception of a few patches of heath and forest, farmland mainly covers the area. Common trees include oak, beech, ash and, in Scotland, pine and birch. Wild animal life comprises mainly species of smaller mammals ( such as badgers, foxes and rodents), birds (over . 400 species of which have been recorded, either breeding or migrating) and insects. There are about 30 kinds of freshwater fish. Reptiles and amphibians are few. Common and gray seals may be seen off parts of the coast.

For many years Britain has had policies and laws to protect its natural environment - e.g., designating National Parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty.

People: Britain absorbed a range of foreign cultures and traditions during the early centuries - Roman, Viking and Norman among them. In more recent times people from overseas have continued to settle in Britain, either to escape political or religious persecution, or in search of economic opportunities. Ethnic minorities now comprise about 5. 5 % of the population. All citizens enjoy the same rights and privileges. Racial discrimination is unlawful under the Race Relations Act 1976.

Languages: English is the official language, although the Welsh language has equal validity in Wales.

Cornish is now extinct (last speaker died around 1800);

Welsh spoken by 25% of total population of Wales but in some rural areas by 75%: still very much alive with radio and TV programmes, newspapers and festivals (Eisteddfod). Gaelic is only spoken in rural N.W.Scotland: in contrast to Welsh, it is rapidly declining with fewer than 50,000 speakers. Local place names in all these areas are based on the appropriate language, however. Irish Gaelic (Erse) is rather artificially imposed within the education system. It is the natural speech of only small numbers along the West coast.