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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain) is a sovereign country located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.

The United Kingdom is a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system, with its seat of government in the capital city of London. The United Kingdom consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are three devolved national administrations, each with varying powers, based in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland respectively. Associated with the UK, but not constitutionally part of it, are three Crown Dependencies. The United Kingdom has fourteen overseas territories. These are remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in 1922, encompassed almost a third of the world's land surface and was the largest empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former territories.

The UK is an EMDC and has the world's fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP and seventh-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It was the world's first industrialised state and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The UK remains a great power with leading economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence. It is a recognised nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks third or fourth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946; it is also a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the European Union, the Council of Europe, the G7, the G8, the G20, NATO, the OECD and the World Trade Organization.

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Triptych, May–June 1973 is a triptych completed in 1973 by the Irish-born artist Francis Bacon. The oil-on-canvas work was painted in memory of Bacon's lover George Dyer, who committed suicide on the eve of the artist's retrospective at Paris's Grand Palais in October 1971. The triptych is a portrait of the moments before Dyer's death. Bacon was preoccupied by Dyer's suicide in his last twenty years, during which time he painted a number of similarly themed works. He admitted to friends that he never fully recovered from the event, and described painting the triptych as an exorcism of his feelings of loss and guilt. The work is stylistically more static and monumental than Bacon's earlier triptychs. It has been described as one of his "supreme achievements", and is generally viewed as his most intense and tragic canvas. Of the three "Black Triptychs" that Bacon created to confront Dyer's death, Triptych, May–June 1973 is generally regarded as the most accomplished. In 2006, The Daily Telegraph's art critic Sarah Crompton wrote that "emotion seeps into each panel of this giant canvas…the sheer power and control of Bacon's brushwork take the breath away". In 1989, the work sold at Sotheby's for US$6,270,000, the highest price then paid for a Bacon work. (more...)

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The early life of Samuel Johnson was marked by great intelligence and an eagerness for learning. Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, the sickly infant who grew up to become "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history" soon began to exhibit the tics that would colour how others viewed him in his later years. His early life was dominated by his family's financial strain and his abortive efforts to establish himself as a school teacher. Johnson spent a year studying at Pembroke College, Oxford, but was unable to continue his education there because of his lack of financial support. He tried to find employment as a teacher, but found it impossible to secure a long-term position. In 1735 he married Elizabeth "Tetty" Porter, a widow 20 years his senior. The responsibilities of marriage made Johnson determined to succeed as an educator, and encouraged him to establish his own school. The venture was unsuccessful however, and so he decided to leave his wife behind in Lichfield and move to London, where he spent the rest of his life, and where his literary career began. Working initially as a minor Grub Street hack writer, he started to write essays for The Gentleman's Magazine, and authored the Life of Mr Richard Savage (his first successful literary biography), the powerful poem London (an 18th-century version of Juvenal's Third Satire), and the unsuccessful tragic drama Irene, which was not produced until 1749. (more...)

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... that the Mary Rose was a Tudor period warship that sank during the Battle of the Solent in 1545 and was salvaged (pictured) by maritime archaeologists 437 years later?
... that Sir Hugh Norman-Walker was forced to decline the appointment of the Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man in 1973 because his wife would not take up the new post with him?
... that a skimmington, a custom in which victims were mocked and humiliated in a noisy public procession, occurred in England as late as 1917?
... that Princess Alice of the United Kingdom was married to Prince Louis of Hesse in an atmosphere described by Queen Victoria as "more of a funeral than a wedding"?
... that as a result of the Scarman report into the 1981 Brixton riots, the independent Police Complaints Authority was established in 1985?
... that the archaeological finds from Steeple Langford include a Bronze Age palstave and a Romano-British painted pebble?
... that Slade's Case has been called a "watershed" moment in English law?

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England	Northern Ireland	Scotland	Wales

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Isle of Man	Ireland	Europe	European Union	British Empire

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The British Airways London Eye, sometimes called the Millennium Wheel, was the first observation wheel (a type of Ferris wheel) to be built, and has been the only one in operation since its opening at the end of 1999. It stands 135 metres (443 feet) high on the western end of Jubilee Gardens, on the South Bank of the River Thames in Lambeth, London, between Westminster and Hungerford Bridges. It is adjacent to London's County Hall, and stands opposite the offices of the Ministry of Defence.