Text d Read the text. Explain in English what “a free house” is. The Pleasures of the Pub

Where do you think most tourists go when they visit Britain? Is it Buckingham Palace? The Tower of London? Stratford –on- Avon? Oxford? Sorry, obviously, not. Most tourists spend most of their time visiting the pub.

As the British have more than 70,000 of them, which is a large number for a small country, there are quite a lot of them to visit.

As far as it is known, no tourist has managed to visit them all, but some of the people have had a good time trying! In the majority of the pubs, the most popular drink is beer. You can have a glass of it, called a pint, or a small glass which we call a half.

Remember that if you want English beer, you ask for bitter because in English, beer is a very general word and can mean lager. Most pubs are owned by a brewery, the factory that makes the beer. These sell only the beer made by that brewery.

If you see a pub that is a free house, this means that the pub is inde­pendent and can buy its beer from any brewery. These are good pubs to visit if you want to try different kinds of beer.

Another thing that confuses for­eigners is that a lot of pubs have the same name. The most popular pub names are: "The Red Lion"; "The Crown"; "The White Hart".

Another confusing thing about pubs is their opening and closing times. If you come from a country where the bars are open all the time, you'll get very angry at four o'clock on a hot summer's day when you feel like a long cool drink. You can't get one.

British pubs open at 10.30 in the morning and close at 2.30 in the afternoon. They open again at 5.30 and close at 11.00. This is generally true but you will find slightly different opening and closing times in different parts of the country. And don't forget that Sundays are different - the pubs open one and a half hours later, and close half an hour earlier. Of course in Scotland, Wales and Ireland, opening and closing times are completely different...

Text E

Read the text. Give a detailed answer to the following question: Why is The National Gallery considered to be one of the most outstanding art collections in the world?

London's Artistic Attractions

In the sphere of visual art London can supply any visitor with a vast range of emotions. The British Museum is an almost incomparable introduction to Egyptian, Greek, and Roman arts in all their branches, from pottery to sculpture; and it can hold its own with antiquity department of the Louvre or the prewar Pergamon museum in Berlin. The collection has been arranged with great care, and the layout is clear and easy to grasp.

The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square has one of the best balanced picture collections in the world. It can show the progress of Italian painting from the medieval to the mature mastery of the Renaissance; some outstanding pictures of the old Roman masters; an excellent choice of Spanish painters, with El Greco, Velasquez, and Ribera leading; a great variety of unsurpassed Dutch and Flemish masters; a most valuable display of French paintings from the early days of the Impressionists; and, of course, the bulk of the finest English painting, with Gainsborough, Turner, Constable, and Reynolds.

The Tate Gallery in Millbank has a collection complementary to that of the National Gallery, for it presents modern masters of England and France. Its collection of French Impressionists is outstanding, and there are some fine examples of modern sculpture. The Victoria and Albert Museum in Brompton Road has a splendid collection mainly of the applied arts of all countries and periods and many exhibits of interest to any student of the visual arts.

There are great art treasures dispersed in private collections throughout the country; the Queen's collection is the most valuable among them.