General Facts

People have ways enjoyed listening to thrilling adventures and tales about courageous warriors and heroes. These ‘heroic’ stories on a grand scale are called EPICS and they have a central figure who is identified with the aspirations of a nation or race.

They incorporate myth, legend, folk tale and history. The earliest epics were handed down by oral tradition. Others were written down at the start. The Nordic sagas (”epic poems”) of Scandinavia were not written down, but declaimed before an audience, often during the course of a celebration.

Beowulf is the most famous Old English epic, though it was not composed in Britain. It was brought by word of mouth by the invading Vikings and written down in Anglo-Saxon (Old English).

In AD 597 a missionary called Augustine was sent from Rome to England to make the Anglo-Saxons Christians. Many monks came from Rome and many monasteries and churches were built.

Up to then, the Anglo-Saxon language had been only spoken. The monks, who spent most of their time copying manuscripts by hand, wrote it down for the first time. The Lindisfarne Gospels were copied out by hand at the end of the 7th century. The task took the monks 23 years.

ALFRED (849-901), who became King of Wessex in 871, saved England from conquest by the Vikings. He was not only a fighter but also a teacher and author. He worked very hard and planned every part of his day giving eight hours in turn for study, work and rest.

Since in those days there were no clocks, he marked long candles into parts which took an hour to burn. Alfred founded schools and monasteries, invited scholars from abroad and worked earnestly for the advancement of learning.

He ordered monks to translate the Bible into Anglo-Saxon and to write books in the same language. The most important is the story of Britain beginning with the birth of Christ. Its title is “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle”. It is also the first history of any Teutonic people in their own language.

One of the many puzzles left by early peoples, Stonehenge is a series of stone circles in southern England. The earliest circles were begun nearly 5,000 years ago, that was 200 years before the great pyramids. Stonehenge was probably a temple, but scholars think it was also used as a calendar.

Another theory says that the great stone circle was used to store terrestrial energy, which was then generated across the country, possibly through ‘ley lines’ - a name given to invisible lines which link up ancient sites throughout Britain.

Around 55 B.C. the Romans conquered the southern part of Britain. They did not conquer Scotland. They introduced the law as well as the customs of the great empire. They built in Britain a system of very good Roman roads which have survived to this day. In order to protect themselves from the avenging raids of the Celts in the north they built great fortifications such as Hadrian’s Wall.

For about 20 years after the Roman invasion, the Britons continued fighting. In 60 AD, a tribe called the Iceni, revolted, led by their queen, Boadicea. The rebellion was suppressed. Boadicea poisoned herself rather than allowing herself to be captured by the Romans. Today, near Westminster Bridge, London, one can admire the statue of Queen Boadicea driving her chariot drawn by horses.

The Romans developed the present site of Bath soon after they landed in Britain in AD 43. Hot baths were essential to a Roman. Aquae Sulis (which is the name the Romans gave to the city of Bath) offered the foreign invaders ideal conditions. The hot baths and warm rooms were heated by the Roman hypocaust - a method of underfloor heating.

By the end of the 4th century, Rome had to withdraw its legions as the Roman Empire itself was in trouble. The Romans gave the names of all months in English; some of the British modern laws are based on Roman laws.

First, there were the Celts who settled in various parts of Europe. The Celts living in Britain were called Britons. Their civilization was that of the Iron Age. The Druids were the priests of the Celts. The Druids were also teachers of history and poetry and were the doctors of the day, making medicines from herbs collected in the woods.

Mistletoe, a plant that usually grows and feeds on oaks and which was always cut with a golden knife was particularly sacred. At Stonehenge the Celts probably had a temple of the sun. The descendants of the Celts still live in Wales, Scotland and Ireland and speak their language, Gaelic.

People nowadays often express their admiration towards the spirit of the Celts by using Celtic tattoo designs, which have beautifully interlaced models and knots that perfectly express the Celtic spirituality.

Michelle
“I particularly like London as it has so many parks and gardens where you can escape from the noise and the crowd and forget you are in the middle of the busiest capital in Europe. What I also like and don’t think you can find anywhere else in Britain are the extraordinary cultural opportunities it provides.”

Martin
“I could say I admire London more than I like it. I could spend hours on end in its fabulous museums. And then I always considered the business atmosphere here is more competitive than anywhere else in Britain.”

Robert
“London is too big and crowded for my taste. I hate traffic jams and I can’t understand how the English can be so self-controlled when they waste time. After all the famous saying “Time is money”, is English, isn’t it?’

Dora
“I love London. Samuel Johnson was right when he said that when a man is tired of London he is tired of life. I adore the long streets in central London with stylish houses, I love the shops and the restaurants. It’s a pity London has so many problems - traffic problems, social problems and overcrowding.”

The first impression when in Bucharest comes from the great extent of space that it covers. This is mainly because there are so many houses standing in their separate gardens. Owing to this, Calea Victoriei, the main street of the city, is as long as Oxford Street and Regent Street put together.

Bucharest, then, is a town which is spread out. So are the hours kept by its inhabitants; only you would not think so, for they pass so quickly. It is a question of temperament, and climate. In the summer it is as hot as India. No business can be done between midday and five o’clock. It is at that hour, or later, that the shops open for the afternoon and they do not close their shutters till nine or ten.

You dine, therefore, at ten or eleven, and no one would think of going to bed till three or four. This again explains the great number of restaurants and cafes and, in its turn, accounts for the popular music which is incomparable and haunts the mind. The autumn, which is the most beautiful season of all, is followed by a winter of deep snow and sledges.

I had been advised by many persons, when going to Romania, to see the country first and the capital last. Bucharest, according to their opinions was no more than a bad copy of Paris. Actually, in Bucharest, there is nothing whatever of Paris, except the one or two inevitable dress shops. The character of Bucharest is in its personality, not its monuments.

Question tags are the small questions that come at the end of sentences in speech or in informal writing. They are normally used for confirmation of what has just been said. If we ask for confirmation we use falling intonation, if we are not sure, we use rising intonation.

Negative tags come after affirmative sentences and non-negative tags after negative sentences. The question tag for “am I” is “aren’t I”.

Imperatives can be also followed by question tags “will you”, “would you”, “can you”, “could you”, to tell, ask or invite people to do things.

There are three big airports in London, that are out of the residential area, within one to two hours of the centre of the British capital. These are Gatwick, Heathrow and Stansted. Heathrow, London’s main airport, handles more international flights than any other airport in the world.

Every 45 seconds a plane takes off or lands here and all the four terminals are extremely busy. The airport building itself now resembles a real city whose streets are the long corridors leading to the gates, with fashionable shops, restaurants and waiting areas. Gatwick, a bit further from the centre of London, handles both national and international flights and in the 1980’s another airport was built to relieve the congestion of Heathrow: Stansted.