The ceremonial counties of England is a collective name which can be applied to areas to which are appointed a Lord Lieutenant. Legally they are defined by the Lieutenancies Act 1997 as Counties and areas for the purposes of the lieutenancies in Great Britain with reference to the areas used for local government.

The concept of the counties used for the Lieutenancy differing from those used for administrative purposes is not a new one: some counties corporate were appointed separate Lieutenants from the larger county (often the posts would be held jointly), and the three Ridings of Yorkshire had been treated as three counties for Lieutenancy since the 17th century.

The Local Government Act 1888 set up county councils to take over the administrative functions of Quarter Sessions in the counties. It created new entities called "administrative counties" that constituted all the county apart from the county boroughs: also some traditional subdivisions of counties were constituted administrative counties, for instance the Soke of Peterborough in Northamptonshire and the Isle of Ely in Cambridgeshire. The Act further established that areas that were part of an administrative county would be part of the county for all purposes. The largest difference was the existence of the County of London, created both an administrative county and a "county" by the Act, which covered parts of the historic counties of Middlesex, Kent and Surrey. Other differences were small and resulted from the constraint that urban sanitary districts (and later urban districts and municipal boroughs) were not permitted to straddle county boundaries.

Counties of England are areas used for the purposes of administrative, geographical and political demarcation. For administrative purposes, England outside Greater London and the Isles of Scilly is divided into 83 counties. The counties may consist of a single district or be divided into several districts. As of April 2009, 27 of these counties are divided into districts and have a county council. Six of the counties, covering the major conurbations, are known as metropolitan counties, which do not have county councils, although some functions are organised on a county-wide basis by the lower-tier districts (or metropolitan boroughs) acting jointly.

All of England (including Greater London and the Isles of Scilly) is also divided into 48 ceremonial counties, which are also known as geographic counties. Most ceremonial counties correspond to a metropolitan or non-metropolitan county of the same name, but often with reduced boundaries.

The current arrangement is the result of incremental reform. Many of the counties have their origins in the Middle Ages, although the larger counties of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Sussex lost many or all of their administrative functions centuries ago. The geographic counties which existed before the local government reforms of 1965 and 1974 are referred to as ancient counties or historic counties. From 1889 to 1974 areas with county councils were known as administrative counties, which excluded larger town and cities known as county boroughs and included divisions of some geographic counties. From 1974 to 1996 the metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties, some of which were established only in 1974, corresponded directly with the ceremonial counties.

England ⁱ/ˈɪŋɡlənd/ is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, while the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separate it from continental Europe. Most of England comprises the central and southern part of the island of Great Britain in the North Atlantic. The country also includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.

The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but it takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in AD 927, and since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world. The English language, the Anglican Church, and English law—the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world—developed in England, and the country's parliamentary system of government has been widely adopted by other nations. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's Royal Society laid the foundations of modern experimental science.