Freedom Of Speech

What is Freedom Of Speech and do we have it, especially here in England and the rest of the United Kingdom? The answer is yes, barely, but it is looking more likely as each year passes that it will disappear unless we STAND UP for our rights.

Whatever is thrown at us we SHOULD NOT be made to feel afraid and NEVER stop speaking out on what we believe is RIGHT as long as we cause no harm or hate towards anyone and DO NOT cause criminal damage. I am NOT a violent man and I DO NOT condone any of the things I have mentioned.

We are all entitled to our opinions and we can RESPECTABLY agree to disagree on them, but remember RESPECT GOES BOTH WAYS, and if your opinion drowns out mine and you have no respect for me or my opinions then you are opinionated and I have no room in my life for anyone like that.

If people are being silenced for their opinions because they don’t fit the narrative of whoever is giving theirs then it is WRONG.

This page explains what Freedom Of Speech is and, for me, to PEACEFULLY express how I feel about certain topics. Many will agree with me and many won’t but if my right to express myself is overruled or punished by others who clearly do not have peaceful intentions, and want to shut me up, and many like me, and jail us for our rightful opinions of something that isn’t just, then they become tyrannical oppressors.

I am a loving, peaceful man but I have a right to be angry about things I disagree with as long as I do so in a non-violent way. I have a right to protect my Kids and Grandkids and want a better, safer future for them without being labelled far right whilst certain people are protected by two-tier policing and are allowed to do things that are against the law. They are NOT punished for their actions and face no consequences. How is that fair?

I am tired of becoming a second-class citizen in my own country and something has to change for the better and it has to happen much sooner than later.

WRONG IS WRONG AND ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

About Freedom Of Speech

Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recognised as a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law by the United Nations. Many countries have constitutional law that protects free speech. Terms like free speech, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression are used interchangeably in political discourse. However, in a legal sense, freedom of expression includes any activity of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used.

Article 19 of the U.D.H.R. states that everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference and everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice. The version of Article 19 in the I.C.C.P.R. later amends this by stating that the exercise of these rights carries special duties and responsibilities and may therefore be subject to certain restrictions when necessary for respect of the rights or reputation of others or the protection of national security or public order, or public health or morals.

Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be recognised as being absolute, and common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, hate speech, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labelling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, dignity, the right to be forgotten, public security, blasphemy and perjury. Justifications for such include the harm principle, proposed by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, which suggests that the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

The idea of the offence principle is also used to justify speech limitations, describing the restriction on forms of expression deemed offensive to society, considering factors such as extent, duration, motives of the speaker, and ease with which it could be avoided. With the evolution of the digital age, the application of freedom of speech becomes more controversial as new means of communication and restrictions arise, for example, the Golden Shield Project, an initiative by the Chinese government’s Ministry of Public Security that filters potentially unfavourable data from foreign countries. Facebook routinely and automatically eliminates what it perceives as hate speech, even if such words are used ironically or poetically with no intent to insult others.

The Human Rights Measurement Initiative measures the right to opinion and expression for countries around the world, using a survey of in-country human rights experts.

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1949.

From the F.D.R. Presidential Library & Museum.

An Orator and Crowd at Speakers Corner, London in 1974.

Taken in Hyde Park.

The History Of Freedom Of Speech

Freedom of speech and expression has a long history that predates modern international human rights instruments. It is thought that the ancient Athenian democratic principle of free speech may have emerged in the late 6th or early 5th century B.C.

Freedom of speech was vindicated by Erasmus and Milton. Edward Coke claimed freedom of speech as an ancient custom of Parliament in the 1590’s, and it was affirmed in the Protestation of 1621. Restating what is written in the English Declaration of Rights, 1689, England’s Bill of Rights 1689 legally established the constitutional right of freedom of speech in Parliament, which is still in effect. This so-called parliamentary privilege includes no possible defamation claims meaning Parliamentarians are free to speak up in the House without fear of legal action. This protection extends to written proceedings, for example, written and oral questions, motions and amendments tabled to bills and motions.

One of the world’s first freedom of the press acts was introduced in Sweden in 1766 (Swedish Freedom of the Press Act), mainly due to the classical liberal member of parliament and Ostrobothnian priest Anders Chydenius. In a report published in 1776, he wrote:

“No evidence should be needed that a certain freedom of writing and printing is one of the strongest bulwarks of a free organisation of the state, as, without it, the estates would not have sufficient information for the drafting of good laws, and those dispensing justice would not be monitored, nor would the subjects know the requirements of the law, the limits of the rights of government, and their responsibilities. Education and ethical conduct would be crushed. Coarseness in thought, speech, and manners would prevail, and dimness would darken the entire sky of our freedom in a few years.”

Under the leadership of Anders Chydenius, the Caps at the Swedish Riksdag in Gavle on the 2nd of December, 1766, the adoption of a freedom of the press regulation that stopped censorship and introduced the principle of public access to official records in Sweden was passed. Excluded were defamation of the king’s majesty and the Swedish Church.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, adopted during the French Revolution in 1789, specifically affirmed freedom of speech as an inalienable right. Adopted in 1791, freedom of speech is a feature of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The French Declaration provides for freedom of expression in Article 11, which states that:

“The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.“

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, states that:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This right includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.^“

Today, freedom of speech, or the freedom of expression, is recognised in international and regional human rights law. The right is enshrined in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights and Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Based on John Milton’s arguments, freedom of speech is understood as a multi-faceted right that includes not only the right to express, or disseminate, information and ideas but three further distinct aspects, which are, the right to seek information and ideas, the right to receive information and ideas and the right to impart information and ideas.

International, regional and national standards also recognise that freedom of speech, as the freedom of expression, includes any medium, whether orally, in writing, in print, through the internet or in art forms. This means that the protection of freedom of speech as a right includes the content and the means of expression.

Relationship To Other Rights

The right to freedom of speech and expression is closely related to other rights. It may be limited when conflicting with other rights (see limitations on freedom of speech below). The right to freedom of expression is also related to the right to a fair trial and court proceeding which may limit access to the search for information, or determine the opportunity and means in which freedom of expression is manifested within court proceedings. As a general principle freedom of expression may not limit the right to privacy, as well as the honour and reputation of others. However, greater latitude is given when criticism of public figures is involved.

The right to freedom of expression is particularly important for media, which play a special role as the bearer of the general right to freedom of expression for all. However, freedom of the press does not necessarily enable freedom of speech. Judith Lichtenberg has outlined conditions in which freedom of the press may constrain freedom of speech. For example, if all the people who control the various mediums of publication suppress information or stifle the diversity of voices inherent in freedom of speech. This limitation was famously summarised by the New Yorker on the 14th of May, 1960, as freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. Lichtenberg argues that freedom of the press is simply a form of property right summed up by the principle of no money, no voice.

As A Negative Right

Freedom of speech is usually seen as a negative right. This means that the government is legally obliged to take no action against the speaker based on the speaker’s views, but that no one is obliged to help any speakers publish their views, and no one is required to listen to, agree with, or acknowledge the speaker or the speaker’s views. These concepts correspond to earlier traditions of natural law and common law rights.

Democracy In Relation To Social Interaction

Freedom of speech is understood to be fundamental in a democracy. The norms on limiting freedom of expression mean that public debate may not be completely suppressed even in times of emergency. One of the most notable proponents of the link between freedom of speech and democracy is Alexander Meiklejohn. He has argued that the concept of democracy is that of self-government by the people. For such a system to work, an informed electorate is necessary. To be appropriately knowledgeable, there must be no constraints on the free flow of information and ideas. According to Meiklejohn, democracy will not be true to its essential ideal if those in power can manipulate the electorate by withholding information and stifling criticism. Meiklejohn acknowledges that the desire to manipulate opinion can stem from the motive of seeking to benefit society. However, he argues, choosing manipulation negates, in its means, the democratic ideal.

Eric Barendt has called this defence of free speech on the grounds of democracy probably the most attractive and certainly the most fashionable free speech theory in modern Western democracies. Thomas I. Emerson expanded on this defence when he argued that freedom of speech helps to provide a balance between stability and change. Freedom of speech acts as a safety valve to let off steam when people might otherwise be bent on revolution. He argues that the principle of open discussion is a method of achieving a more adaptable and at the same time more stable community, of maintaining the precarious balance between healthy cleavage and necessary consensus. Emerson furthermore maintains that opposition serves a vital social function in offsetting or ameliorating the normal process of bureaucratic decay.

Research undertaken by the Worldwide Governance Indicators project at the World Bank indicates that freedom of speech, and the process of accountability that follows it, have a significant impact on the quality of governance of a country. Voice and Accountability within a country, defined as the extent to which a country’s citizens can participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and free media is one of the six dimensions of governance that the Worldwide Governance Indicators measure for more than 200 countries. Against this backdrop, development agencies must create grounds for effective support for a free press in developing countries.

Richard Moon has developed the argument that the value of freedom of speech and freedom of expression lies in social interactions. Moon said that by communicating an individual forms relationships and associations with others such as family, friends, co-workers, church congregation, and countrymen. By entering into discussion with others an individual participates in the development of knowledge and the direction of the community.

The permanent Free Speech Wall In Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A.

Limitations Of Freedom Of Speech

Content Viewed As Harmful And Offensive

Some views are illegal to express because they are perceived by some to be harmful to others. This category often includes speech that is both false and potentially dangerous, for example, such as falsely shouting “Fire!” in a theatre and causing panic. Justifications for limitations to freedom of speech often reference the harm principle or the offence principle.

In On Liberty (1859), John Stuart Mill argued that there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered. Mill argues that the fullest liberty of expression is required to push arguments to their logical limits, rather than the limits of social embarrassment.

In 1985, Joel Feinberg introduced what is known as the offence principle. Feinberg said it is always a good reason in support of a proposed criminal prohibition that it would probably be an effective way of preventing serious offence (as opposed to injury or harm) to persons other than the actor, and that it is probably a necessary means to that end. Hence Feinberg argues that the harm principle sets the bar too high and that some forms of expression can be legitimately prohibited by law because they are very offensive. Nevertheless, as offending someone is less serious than harming someone, the penalties imposed should be higher for causing harm. In contrast, Mill does not support legal penalties unless they are based on the harm principle. Because the degree to which people may take offence varies or may be the result of unjustified prejudice, Feinberg suggests that several factors need to be taken into account when applying the offence principle, including the extent, duration and social value of the speech, the ease with which it can be avoided, the motives of the speaker, the number of people offended, the intensity of the offence, and the general interest of the community at large.

Jasper Doomen argued that harm should be defined from the point of view of the individual citizen, not limiting harm to physical harm since nonphysical harm may also be involved. Feinberg’s distinction between harm and offence is criticised as largely trivial.

In 1999, Bernard Harcourt wrote about the collapse of the harm principle by saying, “Today the debate is characterised by a cacophony of competing harm arguments without any way to resolve them. There is no longer an argument within the structure of the debate to resolve the competing claims of harm. The original harm principle was never equipped to determine the relative importance of harms”.

Interpretations of both the harm and offence limitations to freedom of speech are culturally and politically relative. Many European countries outlaw speech that might be interpreted as Holocaust denial. These include Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, Switzerland and Romania. Armenian genocide denial is also illegal in some countries.

Certain public institutions may also enact policies restricting the freedom of speech, for example, speech codes at state-operated schools.

In the U.S., the standing landmark opinion on political speech is Brandenburg Ohio (1969), expressly overruling Whitney v California. In Brandenburg, the U.S. Supreme Court referred to the right even to speak openly of violent action and revolution in broad terms:

“Our decisions have fashioned the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not allow a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or cause such action.^“

The opinion in Brandenburg discarded the previous test of clear and present danger and made the right to freedom of (political) speech protections in the United States almost absolute. Hate speech is also protected by the First Amendment in the United States, as decided in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, (1992) in which the Supreme Court ruled that hate speech is permissible, except in the case of imminent violence. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution gives more detailed information on this decision and its historical background.

Time, Place And Manner

Read more here.

Limitations based on time, place, and manner apply to all speech, regardless of the view expressed. They are generally restrictions that are intended to balance other rights or a legitimate government interest. For example, a time, place, and manner restriction might prohibit a noisy political demonstration at a politician’s home during the middle of the night, as that impinges upon the rights of the politician’s neighbours to quiet enjoyment of their own homes. An otherwise identical activity might be permitted if it happened at a different time (e.g., during the day), at a different place (e.g., at a government building or in another public forum), or in a different manner (e.g., a silent protest). Funeral Protests are a complex issue in the United States. It is the right of Americans to be able to hold a peaceful protest against various policies they deem unreasonable. It is a question of whether or not it is appropriate through the time, place and manner outlook to protest funeral proceedings. Because of recent flare-ups of this occurring, legislation has been put into action to limit this. Now, funeral protests are governed and prohibited by law on a state-to-state basis inside the United States.

The Internet And Information Society

Jo Glanville, editor of the Index on Censorship, states that the Internet has been a revolution for censorship as much as for free speech. International, national and regional standards recognise that freedom of speech, as one form of freedom of expression, applies to any medium, including the Internet. The Communications Decency Act (C.D.A.) of 1996 was the first major attempt by the United States Congress to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In 1997, in the landmark cyberlaw case of Reno v. ACLU, the U.S. Supreme Court partially overturned the law. Judge Stewart R. Dalzell, one of the three federal judges who in June 1996 declared parts of the C.D.A. unconstitutional, in his opinion stated the following:

“The Internet is a far more speech-enhancing medium than print, the village green, or the mails. Because it would necessarily affect the Internet itself, the C.D.A. would necessarily reduce the speech available for adults on the medium. This is a constitutionally intolerable result. Some of the dialogue on the Internet surely tests the limits of conventional discourse. Speech on the Internet can be unfiltered, unpolished, and unconventional, even emotionally charged, sexually explicit, and vulgar, in a word, indecent in many communities. But we should expect such speech to occur in a medium in which citizens from all walks of life have a voice. We should also protect the autonomy that such a medium confers to ordinary people as well as media magnates. My analysis does not deprive the Government of all means of protecting children from the dangers of Internet communication. The Government can continue to protect children from pornography on the Internet through vigorous enforcement of existing laws criminalising obscenity and child pornography. As we learned at the hearing, there is also a compelling need for public educations about the benefits and dangers of this new medium, and the Government can fill that role as well. In my view, our action today should only mean that Government’s permissible supervision of Internet contents stops at the traditional line of unprotected speech. The absence of governmental regulation of Internet content has unquestionably produced a kind of chaos, but as one of the plaintiff’s experts put it with such resonance at the hearing: “What achieved success was the very chaos that the Internet is. The strength of the Internet is chaos.” Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so that strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects.”

The World Summit on the Information Society (W.S.I.S.) Declaration of Principles adopted in 2003 makes specific reference to the importance of the right to freedom of expression for the Information Society in stating:

We reaffirm, as an essential foundation of the Information society, and as outlined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression, that this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Communication is a fundamental social process, a basic human need and the foundation of all social organisation. It is central to the Information Society. Everyone, everywhere should have the opportunity to participate and no one should be excluded from the benefits of the Information Society offers.”

According to Bernt Hugenholtz and Lucie Guibault, the public domain is under pressure from the commodification of information as information with previously little or no economic value has acquired independent economic value in the information age. This includes factual data, personal data, genetic information and pure ideas. The commodification of information is taking place through intellectual property law, contract law, as well as broadcasting and telecommunications law.

The Free Speech Flag.

“Our government has become increasingly willing to sacrifice the rights of its citizens at the altar of corporate greed. As ridiculous as it sounds, even numbers have become “intellectual property” that corporations can claim ownership of. We here at Badmouth think that idea stinks. We want to start a movement, a movement to reclaim personal liberties and decorporatise the laws of our nation. To that end we have made a flag, a symbol to show support for personal freedoms. Spread it as far and wide as you can. We give this flag away freely, and also give away the rights for people to make similar, derivative works. The colors of the flag are (in hex code format): #09F911 #029D74 #E35BD8 #4156C5 #635688. The letters “C0” are added to signify that simply publishing a number is “Crime Zero”. Spread the word.” – Creator John Marcotte.

Freedom Of Information

Read more here.

Freedom of information is an extension of freedom of speech where the medium of expression is the Internet. Freedom of information may also refer to the right to privacy in the context of the Internet and information technology. As with the right to freedom of expression, the right to privacy is a recognised human right and freedom of information acts as an extension to this right. Freedom of information may also concern censorship in an information technology context, i.e., the ability to access Web content, without censorship or restrictions.

Freedom of information is also explicitly protected by acts such as the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act of Ontario, in Canada. The Access to Information Act gives Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and any person or corporation present in Canada a right to access records of government institutions that are subject to the Act.

Internet Censorship

Relationship With Disinformation

Read more here.

Some legal scholars (such as Tim Wu of Columbia University) have argued that the traditional issues of free speech, the main threat to free speech, is the censorship of suppressive states, and that ill-informed or malevolent speech can and should be overcome by more and better speech rather than censorship assumes scarcity of information. This scarcity prevailed during the 20th century, but with the arrival of the internet, information became plentiful but the attention of listeners was scarce. Furthermore, in the words of Wu, this cheap speech made possible by the internet may be used to attack, harass, and silence as much as it is used to illuminate or debate. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (E.F.F.) has argued that censorship cannot be the only answer to disinformation online and that tech companies have a history of overcorrecting and censoring accurate, useful speech or even worse, reinforcing misinformation with their policies.

According to Wu, in the 21st century, the danger is not suppressive states that target speakers directly, but that targets listeners or it undermines speakers indirectly. More precisely, emerging techniques of speech control depend on (1) a range of new punishments, like unleashing troll armies to abuse the press and other critics, and (2) flooding tactics (sometimes called reverse censorship) that distort or drown out disfavored speech through the creation and dissemination of fake news, the payment of fake commentators, and the deployment of propaganda robots.

As journalist Peter Pomerantsev writes, these techniques employ information in weaponised terms, as a tool to confuse, blackmail, demoralise, subvert and paralyse.

History Of Dissent And Truth

The examples and perspectives below deal primarily with Western culture and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject.

Before the invention of the printing press, a written work, once created, could only be physically multiplied by highly laborious and error-prone manual copying. No elaborate system of censorship and control over scribes existed, who until the 14th century were restricted to religious institutions, and their works rarely caused wider controversy. In response to the printing press, and the theological heresies it allowed to spread, the Roman Catholic Church moved to impose censorship. Printing allowed for multiple exact copies of a work, leading to a more rapid and widespread circulation of ideas and information. The origins of copyright law in most European countries lie in efforts by the Roman Catholic Church and governments to regulate and control the output of printers.

In 1501, Pope Alexander VI issued a Bill against the unlicensed printing of books. In 1559, Pope Paul IV promulgated the Index Expurgatorius, or List of Prohibited Books. The Index Expurgatorius is the most famous and long-lasting example of bad books catalogues issued by the Roman Catholic Church, which presumed to be in authority over private thoughts and opinions, and suppressed views that went against its doctrines. The Index Expurgatorius was administered by the Roman Inquisition, but enforced by local government authorities, and went through 300 editions. Amongst others, it banned or censored books written by René Descartes, Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, David Hume, John Locke, Daniel Defoe, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. While governments and the church encouraged printing in many ways because it allowed for the dissemination of Bibles and government information, works of dissent and criticism could also circulate rapidly. Consequently, governments established controls over printers across Europe, requiring them to have official licenses to trade and produce books.

The notion that the expression of dissent or subversive views should be tolerated, not censured or punished by law, developed alongside the rise of printing and the press. Areopagitica, published in 1644, was John Milton’s response to the Parliament of England’s re-introduction of government licensing of printers, hence publishers. Church authorities had previously ensured that Milton’s essay on the right to divorce was refused a license for publication. In Areopagitica, published without a license, Milton made an impassioned plea for freedom of expression and toleration of falsehood, stating:

“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.^“

Milton’s defence of freedom of expression was grounded in a Protestant worldview. He thought that the English people had the mission to work out the truth of the Reformation, which would lead to the enlightenment of all people. Nevertheless, Milton also articulated the main strands of future discussions about freedom of expression. By defining the scope of freedom of expression and harmful speech, Milton argued against the principle of pre-censorship and in favour of tolerance for a wide range of views. Freedom of the press ceased being regulated in England in 1695 when the Licensing Order of 1643 was allowed to expire after the introduction of the Bill of Rights in 1689 shortly after the Glorious Revolution. The emergence of publications like the Tatler (1709) and the Spectator (1711) are credited for creating a bourgeois public sphere in England that allowed for a free exchange of ideas and information.

More governments attempted to centralise control as the menace of printing spread. The French crown repressed printing and the printer Etienne Dolet was burned at the stake in 1546. In 1557 the British Crown thought to stem the flow of seditious and heretical books by chartering the Stationers’ Company. The right to print was limited to the members of that guild and was restricted to two universities and the 21 existing printers in the city of London, which had 53 printing presses. As the British crown took control of type founding in 1637, printers fled to the Netherlands. Confrontation with authority made printers radical and rebellious, with 800 authors, printers, and book dealers being incarcerated in the Bastille in Paris before it was stormed in 1789.

A succession of English thinkers was at the forefront of early discussion on the right to freedom of expression, among them John Milton (1608 – 74) and John Locke (1632 – 1704). Locke established the individual as the unit of value and the bearer of rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. However, Locke’s ideas evolved primarily around the concept of the right to seek salvation for one’s soul. He was thus primarily concerned with theological matters. Locke neither supported a universal toleration of peoples nor freedom of speech, according to his ideas some groups, such as atheists, should not be allowed.

By the second half of the 17th century philosophers on the European continent like Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle developed ideas encompassing a more universal aspect of freedom of speech and toleration than the early English philosophers. By the 18th century, the idea of freedom of speech was being discussed by thinkers all over the Western world, especially by French philosophes like Denis Diderot, Baron d’Holbach and Claude Adrien Helvetius. The idea began to be incorporated in political theory both in theory as well as practice, the first state edict in history proclaiming complete freedom of speech was the one issued on the 4th of December, 1770 in Denmark-Norway during the regency of Johann Friedrich Struensee. However Struensee himself imposed some minor limitations to this edict on the 7th of October, 1771, and it was even further limited after the fall of Struensee with legislation introduced in 1773, although censorship was not reintroduced.

John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873) argued that without human freedom, there could be no progress in science, law, or politics, which according to Mill, required free discussion of opinion. Mill’s On Liberty, published in 1859, became a classic defence of the right to freedom of expression. Mill argued that truth drives out falsity, therefore the free expression of ideas, true or false, should not be feared. Truth is not stable or fixed but evolves with time. Mill argued that much of what we once considered true has turned out false. Therefore, views should not be prohibited for their apparent falsity. Mill also argued that free discussion is necessary to prevent the deep slumber of a decided opinion. Discussion would drive the march of truth, and by considering false views, the basis of true views could be re-affirmed. Furthermore, Mill argued that an opinion only carries intrinsic value to the owner of that opinion, thus silencing the expression of that opinion is an injustice to a basic human right. It is generally held that for Mill, the only instance in which speech can be justifiably suppressed is to prevent harm from a clear and direct threat. Neither economic or moral implications nor the speaker’s well-being would justify suppression of speech. However Mill in On Liberty suggests the speech of pimps (instigating clients and sex workers to have sex) should be restricted. This suggests he may be willing to restrict some speech that, while not harming others, undermines their decisional autonomy.

In her 1906 biography of Voltaire, Evelyn Beatrice Hall coined the following sentence to illustrate Voltaire’s beliefs:

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.

Hall’s quote is frequently cited to describe the principle of freedom of speech. Noam Chomsky stated:

“If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Dictators such as Stalin and Hitler, were in favour of freedom of speech for views they liked only. If you’re in favour of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favour of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise”.

Lee Bollinger argues that the free speech principle involves a special act of carving out one area of social interaction for extraordinary self-restraint, the purpose of which is to develop and demonstrate a social capacity to control feelings evoked by a host of social encounters. Bollinger argues that tolerance is a desirable value, if not essential. However, critics argue that society should be concerned by those who directly deny or advocate, for example, genocide (see limitations of freedom of speech above).

As chairman of the London-based P.E.N. International, a club which defends freedom of expression and a free press, English author H. G. Wells met with Stalin in 1934 and was hopeful of reform in the Soviet Union. However, during their meeting in Moscow, Wells said:

“The free expression of opinion, even of opposition opinion, I do not know if you are prepared yet for that much freedom here”.

The 1928 novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence was banned for obscenity in several countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, and India. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, it was the subject of landmark court rulings that saw the ban on obscenity overturned. Dominic Sandbrook of The Telegraph in the U.K. wrote:

“Now that public obscenity has become commonplace, it is hard to recapture the atmosphere of a society that saw fit to ban books such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover because it was likely to deprave and corrupt its readers”.

Fred Kaplan of The New York Times stated the overturning of the obscenity laws set off an explosion of free speech in the U.S. The 1960’s also saw the Free Speech Movement, a massive long-lasting student protest on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, during the 1964 – 65 academic year.

In contrast to Anglophone nations, France was a haven for literary freedom. The innate French regard for the mind meant that France was disinclined to punish literary figures for their writing, and prosecutions were rare. While it was prohibited everywhere else, James Joyce’s Ulysses was published in Paris in 1922. Henry Miller’s 1934 novel Tropic of Cancer (banned in the U.S. until 1963) and Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover were published in France decades before they were available in the respective authors’ home countries.

In 1964 comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested in the U.S. due to complaints again about his use of various obscenities. A three-judge panel presided over his widely publicised six-month trial. He was found guilty of obscenity in November 1964. He was sentenced on the 21st of December, 1964, to four months in a workhouse. He was set free on bail during the appeals process and died before the appeal was decided. On the 23rd of December, 2003, thirty-seven years after Bruce’s death, New York Governor George Pataki granted him a posthumous pardon for his obscenity conviction.

In the United States, the right to freedom of expression has been interpreted to include the right to take and publish photographs of strangers in public areas without their permission or knowledge. This is not the case worldwide.

List Of Prohibited Books By Unknown (1564).

The Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books) is a list of publications which the Catholic Church censored for being a danger to itself and its members. It was first printed in 1564 in Venice, Italy.

Panegyricae Orationes Septem By Henric Van Cuyck (1596).

The Panegyricae Orationes Septem is by Henric Van Cuyck, the Bishop of Roermond (1546 – 1609).

First printed in 1596, it is a collection of seven essays by Van Cuyck in the Netherlands, including one defending the need for censorship of the press. He praised the essential role of writing within the history of Christian learning, but argued that the invention of printing by Johannes Gutenberg had resulted in a world infected by pernicious lies.

Van Cuyck particularly singles out the writings of Martin Luther and Jean Calvin, the Talmud, and the Koran, as well as Erasmus of Rotterdam. He also lamented that prohibited books were what printers and booksellers profited from most.

Offences

Read more here.

In some countries, people are not allowed to talk about certain things such as Lese-majeste which is an offence against the dignity of a reigning sovereign or a state. Doing so constitutes an offence. For example, Saudi Arabia was responsible for executing journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. As he entered the Saudi embassy in Turkey, a team of Saudi assassins killed him. Another Saudi writer, Raif Badawi, was arrested in 2012 and lashed.

On the 4th of March, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill introducing prison sentences of up to 15 years for spreading fake news about Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. As of December 2022, more than 4,000 Russians were prosecuted under fake news laws. The 1993 Russian Constitution expressly prohibits censorship in Article 29 of Chapter 2, Rights and Liberties of Man and Citizen.

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Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth Photos (Part 2)

On Monday the 11th of September, 2023, I visited the Old Crown in High Street, Digbeth, Birmingham, for the first time in my life, as part of Birmingham Heritage Week.

Being a Brummie, born and bred, I have passed this pub a lot of times, especially as I got older and I always wondered what it would be like inside. Although as an adult I could have popped in at any time I never got around to it until now. I am pleased I saw, as part of Heritage Week, that this Medieval pub was presenting an exhibition on the 655-year history of Birmingham’s oldest pub. It included never-before-seen photos and illustrations of the Grade-II* listed venue, as well as giving away a booklet by Carl Chinn.

I couldn’t really look around and appreciate how historic it is as much as I would have liked and take better shots inside of the old features because it was packed (and noisy) but I managed to take some decent enough photos to share. Sadly, and bloody annoyingly, 19 photos didn’t turn out at all. It had been a long day for me, coming from Edgbaston after doing a lot of walking around Cannon Hill Park (also another Heritage Week event) and it was a very hot day so my phone was heating up, on charge and playing up by now so that would explain that mystery. It is just my usual bad luck but that’s a subject for another day!

I would have liked to have taken better ones outside too but there are seemingly never-ending roadworks going on and fences everywhere so the options to take decent photos, including crossing to the other side which is completely blocked off, makes it all very restricting indeed.

As someone who battles mental health problems daily, it wasn’t easy being there on my own and my anxiety was very high but it is a nice pub to go to and I am glad I went. I hope to take some better photos one day, however, at £5.50 for a pint of lager shandy, I won’t be going there that often!

The Old Crown In Digbeth Photos (Part 2)

The interior of The Old Crown in Digbeth. Taken on 09/09/23.

The Old Crown well in The Old Crown in Digbeth. Taken on 09/09/23.

The History of The Old Crown sign in The Old Crown in Digbeth. Taken on 09/09/23.

History of The Old Crown in Digbeth. Taken on 09/09/23.

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Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth.

Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth, Birmingham Photos (Part 1).

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The Old Crown – Official website.

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Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth Photos (Part 1)

On Monday the 11th of September, 2023, I visited the Old Crown in High Street, Digbeth, Birmingham, for the first time in my life, as part of Birmingham Heritage Week.

The Old Crown In Digbeth Photos (Part 1)

Looking towards the side of The Old Crown in Digbeth. Taken on 09/09/23.

Looking towards The Old Crown in Digbeth. Taken on 09/09/23.

The Old Crown in Digbeth. Taken on 09/09/23.

Looking towards the side of The Old Crown in Digbeth. Taken on 09/09/23.

The Old Crown sign at The Old Crown in Digbeth. Taken on 09/09/23.

The interior of The Old Crown in Digbeth. Taken on 09/09/23.

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Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth.

Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth, Birmingham Photos (Part 2).

Notes And Links

The Old Crown – Official website.

The Old Crown on Facebook.

The Old Crown on Twitter.

The Old Crown on Instagram.

The Old Crown on YouTube.

Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth

On Monday the 11th of September, 2023, I visited the Old Crown in High Street, Digbeth, Birmingham, for the first time in my life, as part of Birmingham Heritage Week. The pub was celebrating its 165th birthday over the weekend.

Photos Of The Old Crown, Digbeth

Click here to see photographic memories of my time there.

About The Old Crown, Digbeth

The Old Crown pub is in Deritend and is a Grade II* listed building retaining its black and white timber frame. Almost all of the present building dates from the early 16th century.

The Old Crown is Birmingham’s oldest secular building and has existed since 1368.

It is Birmingham’s oldest inn with Queen Elizabeth I staying here in 1575 on her way home from Kenilworth Castle.

Rooms are individually decorated with a mix of en-suite and shared bathrooms. Facilities include TV, tea and coffee, towels and free wifi.

The pub has a restaurant and there are various local eateries a short walk away and award-winning purveyors of street food, Digbeth Dining Club, takes place just two minutes away. The Old Crown is situated a 10-minute walk from the city centre and has many local attractions within easy reach.

Having stood the test of time during the English Civil War the pub & events garden now stands proud in the heart of Digbeth, Birmingham’s thriving creative quarter.

History Of The Old Crown

It is believed the building was constructed between 1450 and 1500 with some evidence dating to 1492 (the same year the Saracen’s Head in nearby Kings Norton was completed). John Leland visited the town during his tours of England and Wales upon entering Birmingham, in 1538 noted the building, as a “mansion house of tymber”. It is thought to have been originally built as the Guildhall and School of St. John, Deritend. This Guild owned a number of other buildings throughout Warwickshire, including the Guildhall in Henley in Arden. The building was purchased in 1589, by John Dyckson, alias Bayleys who, in the 1580’s, had been buying a number of properties and lands in Deritend and in Bordesley.

Described as a tenement and garden, running alongside Heath Mill Lane, the building remained in the Dixon alias Baylis (later Dixon) family for the next hundred years.

In the original deed, John Dyckson is described as a Caryer, which in the West Midlands at this time, when roads were nothing more than hollow-ways and bridle paths, implied that he owned several trains of pack-horses. These would have needed stabling, and Dixon would have needed warehouse space to store goods awaiting dispatch and arrived goods awaiting collection. Such facilities would be useful to other travellers, and it may well be that the use of the house as an Inn, dates from this time. Indeed, since England was in the grip of a patriotic pother over the failed Armada the previous year, it would have been opportune to adopt the name The Crown. However, the earliest documentary evidence of the building’s use as an Inn is from 1626. In a marriage settlement dated the 21st of December, 1666 it was noted by the sign of the Crowne

Heated skirmishes were fought around the building when Prince Rupert’s forces raided Birmingham during the English Civil War.

The building was converted into two houses in 1684 and then converted into three houses in 1693. It remained three houses until the 19th century. In 1851, Joshua Toulmin Smith saved the Old Crown from demolition when the Corporation proposed demolishing the building in order to improve the street. Again in 1856 and 1862, the Corporation proposed to demolish the building and Smith saved the building each time.

In 1991 a local pub company owned by the Brennan family bought the Old Crown. In the summer of 1994, Pat Brennan and his youngest son, Peter, were doing repairs and clearing out the old sheds to the rear of the property when they found the old well, which had been closed off for more than 100 years. Now restored, it is situated at the rear entrance of the pub. At the end of May 1998, under the guidance of Pat and Ellen Brennan and their sons Patrick, Gary and Peter, after the family’s £2 million investment into Birmingham’s most famous hostelry, The Old Crown was restored to its former glory and reopened.

The History of The Old Crown sign inside the pub.

Looking towards The Old Crown, Digbeth, Birmingham. Taken on 09/09/23.

The Old Crown in 2006.

Construction Of The Old Crown

The building is 71 feet, 4 inches (21.74 meters) wide and 20 feet, 2 inches (6.15 meters) deep on the ground floor. On the first floor, which overhangs the front, it is 21 feet, 9 inches (6.63 meters) deep. When built, the original building had a central hall with a length of 40 feet (12 meters) and a width of 20 feet (6 meters). Below this were a number of arched cellars. On the upper floor were just four rooms. The building had a courtyard to its rear which contained a well. It was 26 feet (8 meters) deep and surrounded by large stones. The well was excavated and deepened to produce a total depth of 38 feet (12 meters). The new section of the well was lined with square bricks. At the top, it was 2 feet 7 inches, (787.4 millimetres) at its narrowest diameter and 2 feet, 9 in (838.2 millimetres) at its widest diameter. It widened to around 4 feet (1.2 meters) at the bottom. The well was cleaned in 1863 and Smith added an iron gate to the top of it to preserve it whilst keeping it accessible.

The Old Crown well. Taken on 09/09/23.

Read more about The Old Crown here.

The above article is sourced from The Old Crown website in the About The Old Crown section. The rest is from Wikipedia and is subject to change.

Opening Times

Monday to Thursday: 12:00 p.m. to 23:30 p.m.

Food service until 9:00 p.m.

Friday to Saturday: 12:00 p.m. to 0:30 a.m.

Food service until 9:00 p.m.

Sunday: 12:00 p.m. to 23:00 p.m.

Food service until 5:45 p.m.

Bookings

The Old Crown, winner of the Best Traditional Pub at the 2019 Midland Food and Drink Hospitality Awards, has 10 bedrooms and 1 apartment available to book.

Bookings are not compulsory but highly recommended, especially for weekends, due to how busy they are. They always hold some space for walk-ins, so please feel free to come down even if your preferred date is full, and they will do their best to seat you.

Some dates will show as unavailable in their booking calendar due to events that are yet to be released.

Although they do not have on-site parking, there are a number of local car parks (2 located on the High Street, visible from the hotel), feel free to enquire with them for more details or directions.

To book a room or send them an enquiry via e-mail click here.

Address

High St

Deritend

Birmingham

B12 0LD

Telephone

0121 248 1368.

E-Mail

info@theoldcrown.com

Blog Posts

Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth, Birmingham Photos (Part 1).

Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth, Birmingham Photos (Part 2).

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Images on this page of The Old Crown are the copyright of Frank Parker unless otherwise stated.

The image above of The Old Crown in 2006 is the copyright of Wikipedia user Oosoom. It comes with a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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English Pride: The English Language

I am English, NOT British, Not European, ENGLISH, AND PROUD and I class myself as an English patriot.

You can read more blog articles about England and the English, like the one on here, via my English Pride Index below and click the link to get back to the English Pride page.

The English Language

English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, originally spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the area of Great Britain that later took their name, England. Both names derive from Anglia, a peninsula on the Baltic Sea (which is not to be confused with East Anglia, the eastern part of England that comprises the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex). English is most closely related to Frisian and Low Saxon, while its vocabulary has been significantly influenced by other Germanic languages, particularly Old Norse (a North Germanic language), as well as by Old Norman, French and Latin.

English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century, are collectively called Old English. Middle English began in the late 11th century with the Norman conquest of England; this was a period in which English was influenced by Old French, in particular through its Old Norman dialect. Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the introduction of the printing press to London, the printing of the King James Bible and the start of the Great Vowel Shift.

Modern English has been spreading around the world since the 17th century by the worldwide influence of the British Empire and the United States. Through all types of printed and electronic media of these countries, English has become the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions and professional contexts such as science, navigation and law. Modern English grammar is the result of a gradual change from a typical Indo-European dependent-marking pattern, with rich inflectional morphology and relatively free word order, to a mostly analytic pattern with little inflection, a fairly fixed subject–verb–object word order and a complex syntax. Modern English relies more on auxiliary verbs and word order for the expression of complex tenses, aspect and mood, as well as passive constructions, interrogatives and some negation.

English is the most spoken language in the world (if Chinese is divided into various variants) and the third-most spoken native language in the world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish. It is the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in almost 60 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned English as a second language than there are native speakers. As of 2005, it was estimated that there were over 2 billion speakers of English. English is the majority native language in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand (see Anglosphere) and Ireland, an official language and the main language of Singapore, and it is widely spoken in some areas of the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania. It is a co-official language of the United Nations, the European Union and many other world and regional international organisations. It is the most widely spoken Germanic language, accounting for at least 70% of speakers of this Indo-European branch. English speakers are called “Anglophones”. There is much variability among the many accents and dialects of English used in different countries and regions in terms of phonetics and phonology, and sometimes also vocabulary, idioms, grammar, and spelling, but it does not typically prevent understanding by speakers of other dialects and accents, although mutual unintelligibility can occur at extreme ends of the dialect continuum.

Classification Of The English Language

English is an Indo-European language and belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages. Old English originated from a Germanic tribal and linguistic continuum along the Frisian North Sea coast, whose languages gradually evolved into the Anglic languages in the British Isles, and into the Frisian languages and Low German/Low Saxon on the continent. The Frisian languages, which together with the Anglic languages form the Anglo-Frisian languages, are the closest living relatives of English. Low German/Low Saxon is also closely related, and sometimes English, the Frisian languages, and Low German are grouped together as the Ingvaeonic (North Sea Germanic) languages, though this grouping remains debated. Old English evolved into Middle English, which in turn evolved into Modern English. Particular dialects of Old and Middle English also developed into a number of other Anglic languages, including Scots and the extinct Fingallian and Forth and Bargy (Yola) dialects of Ireland.

Like Icelandic and Faroese, the development of English in the British Isles isolated it from the continental Germanic languages and influences, and it has since diverged considerably. English is not mutually intelligible with any continental Germanic language, differing in vocabulary, syntax, and phonology, although some of these, such as Dutch or Frisian, do show strong affinities with English, especially with its earlier stages.

Unlike Icelandic and Faroese, which were isolated, the development of English was influenced by a long series of invasions of the British Isles by other peoples and languages, particularly Old Norse and Norman French. These left a profound mark of their own on the language so that English shows some similarities in vocabulary and grammar with many languages outside its linguistic clades—but it is not mutually intelligible with any of those languages either. Some scholars have argued that English can be considered a mixed language or a creole—a theory called the Middle English creole hypothesis. Although the great influence of these languages on the vocabulary and grammar of Modern English is widely acknowledged, most specialists in language contact do not consider English to be a true mixed language.

English is classified as a Germanic language because it shares innovations with other Germanic languages such as Dutch, German, and Swedish. These shared innovations show that the languages have descended from a single common ancestor called Proto-Germanic. Some shared features of Germanic languages include the division of verbs into strong and weak classes, the use of modal verbs, and the sound changes affecting Proto-Indo-European consonants, known as Grimm’s and Verner’s laws. English is classified as an Anglo-Frisian language because Frisian and English share other features, such as the palatalisation of consonants that were velar consonants in Proto-Germanic.

History Of The English Language

Proto-Germanic To Old English

The earliest form of English is called Old English or Anglo-Saxon (c. year 550–1066). Old English developed from a set of West Germanic dialects, often grouped as Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic, and originally spoken along the coasts of Frisia, Lower Saxony and southern Jutland by Germanic peoples known to the historical record as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. From the 5th century, the Anglo-Saxons settled Britain as the Roman economy and administration collapsed. By the 7th century, the Germanic language of the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in Britain, replacing the languages of Roman Britain (43–409): Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, and Latin brought to Britain by the Roman occupation. England and English (originally Ænglaland and Ænglisc) are named after the Angles.

Old English was divided into four dialects: the Anglian dialects (Mercian and Northumbrian) and the Saxon dialects, Kentish and West Saxon. Through the educational reforms of King Alfred in the 9th century and the influence of the kingdom of Wessex, the West Saxon dialect became the standard written variety. The epic poem Beowulf is written in West Saxon, and the earliest English poem, Cædmon’s Hymn, is written in Northumbrian. Modern English developed mainly from Mercian, but the Scots language developed from Northumbrian. A few short inscriptions from the early period of Old English were written using a runic script. By the 6th century, a Latin alphabet was adopted, written with half-uncial letterforms. It included the runic letters wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ and thorn ⟨þ⟩, and the modified Latin letters eth ⟨ð⟩, and ash ⟨æ⟩.

Old English is essentially a distinct language from Modern English and is virtually impossible for 21st-century unstudied English-speakers to understand. Its grammar was similar to that of modern German, and its closest relative is Old Frisian. Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs had many more inflectional endings and forms, and word order was much freer than in Modern English. Modern English has case forms in pronouns (he, him, his) and has a few verb inflections (speak, speaks, speaking, spoke, spoken), but Old English had case endings in nouns as well, and verbs had more person and number endings.

The translation of Matthew 8:20 from 1000 shows examples of case endings (nominative plural, accusative plural, genitive singular) and a verb ending (present plural):

Foxas habbað holu and heofonan fuglas nest

Fox-as habb-að hol-u and heofon-an fugl-as nest-∅

fox-nom.pl have-prs.pl hole-acc.pl and heaven-gen.sg bird-nom.pl nest-acc.pl

“Foxes have holes and the birds of heaven nests”

Middle English

From the 8th to the 12th century, Old English gradually transformed through language contact into Middle English. Middle English is often arbitrarily defined as beginning with the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, but it developed further in the period from 1200 to 1450.

First, the waves of Norse colonisation of northern parts of the British Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries put Old English into intense contact with Old Norse, a North Germanic language. Norse influence was strongest in the north-eastern varieties of Old English spoken in the Danelaw area around York, which was the centre of Norse colonisation; today these features are still particularly present in Scots and Northern English. However the centre of norsified English seems to have been in the Midlands around Lindsey, and after 920 CE when Lindsey was reincorporated into the Anglo-Saxon polity, Norse features spread from there into English varieties that had not been in direct contact with Norse speakers. An element of Norse influence that persists in all English varieties today is the group of pronouns beginning with th- (they, them, their) which replaced the Anglo-Saxon pronouns with h– (hie, him, hera).

With the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the now norsified Old English language was subject to contact with Old French, in particular with the Old Norman dialect. The Norman language in England eventually developed into Anglo-Norman. Because Norman was spoken primarily by the elites and nobles, while the lower classes continued speaking Anglo-Saxon (English), the main influence of Norman was the introduction of a wide range of loanwords related to politics, legislation and prestigious social domains. Middle English also greatly simplified the inflectional system, probably in order to reconcile Old Norse and Old English, which were inflectionally different but morphologically similar. The distinction between nominative and accusative cases was lost except in personal pronouns, the instrumental case was dropped, and the use of the genitive case was limited to indicating possession. The inflectional system regularised many irregular inflectional forms, and gradually simplified the system of agreement, making word order less flexible. In the Wycliffe Bible of the 1380s, the verse Matthew 8:20 was written: Foxis han dennes, and briddis of heuene han nestis. Here the plural suffix –n on the verb have is still retained, but none of the case endings on the nouns are present. By the 12th century Middle English was fully developed, integrating both Norse and French features; it continued to be spoken until the transition to early Modern English around 1500. Middle English literature includes Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. In the Middle English period, the use of regional dialects in writing proliferated, and dialect traits were even used for effect by authors such as Chaucer.

Early Modern English

The next period in the history of English was Early Modern English (1500–1700). Early Modern English was characterised by the Great Vowel Shift (1350–1700), inflectional simplification, and linguistic standardisation.

The Great Vowel Shift affected the stressed long vowels of Middle English. It was a chain shift, meaning that each shift triggered a subsequent shift in the vowel system. Mid and open vowels were raised, and closed vowels were broken into diphthongs. For example, the word bite was originally pronounced as the word beet is today, and the second vowel in the word about was pronounced as the word boot is today. The Great Vowel Shift explains many irregularities in spelling since English retains many spellings from Middle English, and it also explains why English vowel letters have very different pronunciations from the same letters in other languages.

English began to rise in prestige, relative to Norman French, during the reign of Henry V. Around 1430, the Court of Chancery in Westminster began using English in its official documents, and a new standard form of Middle English, known as Chancery Standard, developed from the dialects of London and the East Midlands. In 1476, William Caxton introduced the printing press to England and began publishing the first printed books in London, expanding the influence of this form of English. Literature from the Early Modern period includes the works of William Shakespeare and the translation of the Bible commissioned by King James I. Even after the vowel shift the language still sounded different from Modern English: for example, the consonant clusters /kn ɡn sw/ in knight, gnat, and sword were still pronounced. Many of the grammatical features that a modern reader of Shakespeare might find quaint or archaic represent the distinct characteristics of Early Modern English.

In the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, written in Early Modern English, Matthew 8:20 says, “The Foxes haue holes and the birds of the ayre haue nests.” This exemplifies the loss of case and its effects on sentence structure (replacement with subject-verb–object word order, and the use of of instead of the non-possessive genitive), and the introduction of loanwords from French (ayre) and word replacements (bird originally meaning “nestling” had replaced OE fugol).

Spread Of Modern English

By the late 18th century, the British Empire had spread English through its colonies and geopolitical dominance. Commerce, science and technology, diplomacy, art, and formal education all contributed to English becoming the first truly global language. English also facilitated worldwide international communication. England continued to form new colonies, and these later developed their own norms for speech and writing. English was adopted in parts of North America, parts of Africa, Australasia, and many other regions. When they obtained political independence, some of the newly independent nations that had multiple indigenous languages opted to continue using English as the official language to avoid the political and other difficulties inherent in promoting any one indigenous language above the others. In the 20th century, the growing economic and cultural influence of the United States and its status as a superpower following the Second World War has, along with worldwide broadcasting in English by the BBC and other broadcasters, caused the language to spread across the planet much faster. In the 21st century, English is more widely spoken and written than any language has ever been.

As Modern English developed, explicit norms for standard usage were published and spread through official media such as public education and state-sponsored publications. In 1755 Samuel Johnson published his A Dictionary of the English Language, which introduced standard spellings of words and usage norms. In 1828, Noah Webster published the American Dictionary of the English language to try to establish a norm for speaking and writing American English that was independent of the British standard. Within Britain, non-standard or lower class dialect features were increasingly stigmatised, leading to the quick spread of the prestige varieties among the middle classes.

In modern English, the loss of grammatical case is almost complete (it is now only found in pronouns, such as he and him, she and her, who and whom), and SVO word order is mostly fixed. Some changes, such as the use of do-support, have become universalised. (Earlier English did not use the word “do” as a general auxiliary as Modern English does; at first, it was only used in question constructions, and even then was not obligatory. Now, do-support with the verb have is becoming increasingly standardised.) The use of progressive forms in –ing, appears to be spreading to new constructions, and forms such as had been being built are becoming more common. Regularisation of irregular forms also slowly continues (e.g. dreamed instead of dreamt), and analytical alternatives to inflectional forms are becoming more common (e.g. more polite instead of polite). British English is also undergoing change under the influence of American English, fuelled by the strong presence of American English in the media and the prestige associated with the US as a world power.

Read more about The English Language here.

The above articles were taken from Wikipedia and are subject to change.

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The Culture Of England

The English People

English Pride: The Culture Of England

I am English, NOT British, Not European, ENGLISH, AND PROUD and I class myself as an English patriot.

You can read more blog articles about England and the English, like the one on here, via my English Pride Index below and click the link to get back to the English Pride page.

The Culture Of England

The culture of England is defined by the cultural norms of England and the English people. Owing to England’s influential position within the United Kingdom it can sometimes be difficult to differentiate English culture from the culture of the United Kingdom as a whole. However, since Anglo-Saxon times, England has had its own unique culture, apart from Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish culture.

As the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, many of the world’s acclaimed scientists and technological advancements originated from England. England has also played an important role in cinema, literature, technology, engineering, democracy, philosophy, music, science and mathematics. England has long been known for the accomplishments of a wide variety of literature and poetry.

Humour, tradition, and good manners are characteristics commonly associated with being English. The secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport is the government minister responsible for the cultural life of England.

The Architecture Of England

Many ancient standing stone monuments were erected during the prehistoric period; amongst the best known are Stonehenge, Avebury, Devil’s Arrows, Rudston Monolith and Castlerigg. With the introduction of Ancient Roman architecture, there was a development of basilicas, baths, amphitheatres, triumphal arches, villas, Roman temples, Roman roads, Roman forts, stockades and aqueducts. It was the Romans who founded the first cities and towns such as London, Bath, York, Chester and St Albans. Perhaps the best-known example is Hadrian’s Wall stretching right across northern England. Another well-preserved example is the Roman Baths at Bath, Somerset.

English architecture begins with the architecture of the Anglo-Saxons. At least fifty surviving English churches are of Anglo-Saxon origin, although in some cases the Anglo-Saxon part is small and much-altered. All except one timber church are built of stone or brick, and in some cases show evidence of reused Roman work. The architectural character of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical buildings ranges from Coptic-influenced architecture in the early period, through Early Christian basilica influenced architecture, to (in the later Anglo-Saxon period) an architecture characterised by pilaster-strips, blank arcading, baluster shafts and triangular-headed openings.

Many cathedrals of England are ancient, dating from as far back as around 700. They are a major aspect of the country’s artistic heritage. Medieval Christianity included the veneration of saints, with pilgrimages to places where particular saints’ relics were interred. The possession of the relics of a popular saint was a source of funds for an individual church, as the faithful made donations and benefices in the hope that they might receive spiritual aid, a blessing or a healing from the presence of the physical remains of the holy person. Among those churches to benefit in particular were St Albans Abbey, which contained the relics of England’s first Christian martyr; Ripon with the shrine of its founder St. Wilfrid; Durham, which was built to house the body of Saints Cuthbert of Lindisfarne and Aidan; Ely with the shrine of St. Ethelreda; Westminster Abbey with the magnificent shrine of its founder St. Edward the Confessor; at Chichester, the remains of St. Richard; and at Winchester, those of St. Swithun.

All these saints brought pilgrims to their churches, but among them, the most renowned was Thomas Becket, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, assassinated by henchmen of King Henry II in 1170. As a place of pilgrimage, Canterbury was, in the 13th century, second only to Santiago de Compostela. In the 1170s Gothic architecture was introduced at Canterbury and Westminster Abbey. Over the next 400 years, it developed in England, sometimes in parallel with and influenced by Continental forms, but generally with great local diversity and originality.

Following the Norman Conquest, Romanesque architecture (known here as Norman architecture) superseded Anglo-Saxon architecture; later there was a period of transition into English Gothic architecture (of which there are three periods, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular). Norman architecture was built on a vast scale from the 11th century onwards in the form of castles and churches to help impose Norman authority upon their dominion. Many castles remain from the medieval period, such as Windsor Castle (longest-occupied castle in Europe), Bodiam Castle (a moated castle), Tower of London, and Warwick Castle. Expanding on the Norman base there was also castles, palaces, great houses, universities and parish churches.

English Gothic architecture flourished from the 12th to the early 16th century, and famous examples include Westminster Abbey, the traditional place of coronation for the British monarch, which also has a long tradition as a venue for royal weddings, Canterbury Cathedral, one of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in England; Salisbury Cathedral, which has the tallest church spire in the UK; and York Minster, which is the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe.

The secular medieval architecture throughout England has left a legacy of large stone castles. The invention of gunpowder and canons made castles redundant, and the English Renaissance which followed facilitated the development of new artistic styles for domestic architecture, notably Tudor, Elizabethan, Jacobean, English Baroque, Queen Anne and Palladian. Architecture during the Tudor dynasty flourished with magnificent royal palaces, such as Nonsuch Palace, Palace of Placentia, Hampton Court Palace, Hatfield House, Richmond Palace and Palace of Beaulieu.

One of the most acclaimed English architects was Sir Christopher Wren. He was employed by King Charles II to design and rebuild London and many of its ruined ancient churches following the Great Fire of London in 1666. Georgian and Neoclassical architecture advanced after the Age of Enlightenment, evoking achievements in elegant architecture and city planning; the Royal Crescent at Bath is one of the best examples of this. The Regency of George IV is noted for its elegance and achievements in architecture and urban planning. Regency style is also applied to interior design and decorative arts of the period, typified by elegant furniture and vertically striped wallpaper, and to styles of clothing; for men, as typified by the dandy Beau Brummell and for women the Empire silhouette. In early modern times, there was an influence from Renaissance architecture until by the 18th century. Gothic forms of architecture had been abandoned and various classical styles were adopted. During the Victorian era, Gothic Revival architecture developed in England and was preferred for many types of buildings and city planning. Victorian was widespread with vast innovations and engineering achievements (bridges, canals, railway stations, etc.).

In addition to this, around the same time, the Industrial Revolution paved the way for buildings such as The Crystal Palace. The introduction of the sheet glass method into England by the Chance Brothers in 1832 made possible the production of large sheets of cheap but strong glass, and its use in the Crystal Palace created a structure with the greatest area of glass ever seen in a building. It astonished visitors with its clear walls and ceilings that did not require interior lights. Edwardian followed in the early 20th century. Other buildings such as cathedrals and parish churches are associated with a sense of traditional Englishness, as is often the palatial ‘stately home’. Many people are interested in the English country house and the rural lifestyle, evidenced by the number of visitors to properties managed by English Heritage and the National Trust.

Landscape gardening as developed by Capability Brown set an international trend for the English garden. Gardening, and visiting gardens, are regarded as typically English pursuits. By the end of the 18th century the English garden was being imitated by the French landscape garden, and as far away as St. Petersburg, Russia, in Pavlovsk, the gardens of the future Emperor Paul. It also had a major influence on the form of the public parks and gardens which appeared around the world in the 19th century.

Inspired by the great landscape artists of the seventeenth century, the English garden presented an idealized view of nature. At large country houses, the English garden usually included lakes, sweeps of gently rolling lawns set against groves of trees, and recreations of classical temples, Gothic ruins, bridges, and other picturesque architecture, designed to recreate an idyllic pastoral landscape. The English garden was centred on the English country house, stately homes and parks. English Heritage and the National Trust preserve large gardens and landscape parks throughout the country. The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is held every year by the Royal Horticultural Society and is said to be the largest gardening show in the world.

Following the building of the world’s first seaside pier at Ryde, the pier became fashionable at seaside resorts in England during the Victorian era, peaking in the 1860s with 22 being built in that decade. A symbol of the typical English seaside holiday, by 1914 more than 100 pleasure piers were located around the UK coast. Regarded as being among the finest Victorian architecture, there are still a significant number of seaside piers of architectural merit still standing, although some have been lost, including two at Brighton in East Sussex and one at New Brighton in the Wirral. Two piers, Brighton’s now derelict West Pier and Clevedon Pier, were Grade 1 listed. The Birnbeck Pier in Weston-super-Mare is the only pier in the world linked to an island. The National Piers Society gives a figure of 55 surviving seaside piers in England.

Art And Design Of England

England has Europe’s earliest and northernmost ice-age cave art. Prehistoric art in England largely corresponds with art made elsewhere in contemporary Britain, but early medieval Anglo-Saxon art saw the development of a distinctly English style, and English art continued thereafter to have a distinct character. English art made after the formation in 1707 of the Kingdom of Great Britain may be regarded in most respects simultaneously as art of the United Kingdom. The two periods of outstanding achievement were the 7th and 8th centuries, with the metalwork and jewellery from Sutton Hoo and a series of magnificent illuminated manuscripts, and the final period after about 950, when there was a revival of English culture after the end of the Viking invasions.

As in most of Europe at the time, metalwork was the most highly regarded form of art by the Anglo-Saxons, but hardly any survives – there was enormous plundering of Anglo-Saxon churches, monasteries and the possessions of the dispossessed nobility by the new Norman rulers in their first decades, as well as the Norsemen before them, and the English Reformation after them, and most survivals were once on the continent. Anglo-Saxon taste favoured brightness and colour. Opus Anglicanum (“English work”) was recognised as the finest embroidery in Europe. Perhaps the best known piece of Anglo-Saxon art is the Bayeux Tapestry which was commissioned by a Norman patron from English artists working in the traditional Anglo-Saxon style. Anglo-Saxon artists also worked in fresco, stone, ivory and whalebone (notably the Franks Casket), metalwork (for example the Fuller brooch), glass and enamel. Medieval English painting, mainly religious, had a strong national tradition and was influential in Europe.

The English Reformation, which was antipathetic to art, not only brought this tradition to an abrupt stop but resulted in the destruction of almost all wall paintings. Only illuminated manuscripts now survive in large numbers.

There is in the art of the English Renaissance a strong interest in portraiture, and the portrait miniature was more popular in England than anywhere else. English Renaissance sculpture was mainly architectural and for monumental tombs. Interest in English landscape painting had begun to develop by the time of the 1707 Act of Union. English art was dominated by imported artists throughout much of the Renaissance, but in the 18th century, a native tradition became much admired. It is considered to be typified by landscape painting, such as the work of J.M.W. Turner and John Constable. Portraitists like Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds are also significant.

The first famous native English portrait miniaturist is Nicholas Hilliard (c. 1537–1619), whose work was conservative in style but very sensitive to the character of the sitter; his best works are beautifully executed. The colours are opaque, and gold is used to heighten the effect, while the paintings are on card. They are often signed and have frequently also a Latin motto upon them. Hilliard worked for a while in France, and he is probably identical with the painter alluded to in 1577 as Nicholas Belliart. Hilliard was succeeded by his son Lawrence Hilliard (died 1640); his technique was similar to that of his father but bolder, and his miniatures richer in colour.

Isaac Oliver and his son Peter Oliver succeeded Hilliard. Isaac (c. 1560–1617) was the pupil of Hilliard. Peter (1594–1647) was the pupil of Isaac. The two men were the earliest to give roundness and form to the faces they painted. They signed their best works in monogram and painted not only very small miniatures, but larger ones measuring as much as 10 in × 9 in (250 mm × 230 mm). They copied for Charles I of England (1600–1649) on a small scale many of his famous pictures by the old masters. Samuel Cooper (1609–1672) was a nephew and student of the elder Hoskins and is considered the greatest English portrait miniaturist. He spent much of his time in Paris and Holland, and very little is known of his career. His work has a superb breadth and dignity and has been well called life-size work in little. His portraits of the men of the Puritan epoch are remarkable for their truth to life and strength of handling. His work is frequently signed with his initials, generally in gold, and very often with the addition of the date.

Pictorial satirist William Hogarth pioneered Western sequential art, and political illustrations in this style are often referred to as “Hogarthian”. Following Hogarth, political cartoons developed in England in the late 18th century under the direction of James Gillray. Regarded as one of the two most influential cartoonists (the other is Hogarth), Gillray has been referred to as the father of the political cartoon, with his satirical work calling the King (George III), prime ministers and generals to account. The early 19th century saw the emergence of the Norwich school of painters, the first provincial art movement outside of London. Its prominent members were “founding father” John Crome (1768–1821), John Sell Cotman (1782–1842), James Stark (1794–1859), and Joseph Stannard (1797–1830).

In England, landscapes had initially been mostly backgrounds to portraits. The English tradition was founded by Anthony van Dyck and other mostly Flemish artists working in England, but in the 18th century, the works of Claude Lorrain were keenly collected and influenced not only paintings of landscapes, but the English landscape gardens of Capability Brown and others. In the 18th century, watercolour painting, mostly of landscapes, became an English speciality, with both a buoyant market for professional works and a large number of amateur painters, many following the popular systems found in the books of Alexander Cozens and others. By the beginning of the 19th century, the English artists with the highest modern reputations were mostly dedicated landscape painters, showing the wide range of Romantic interpretations of the English landscape found in the works of John Constable and J.M.W. Turner.

During the Baroque and Rococo periods, the first major native portrait painters of the British school were English painters Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who also specialised in clothing their subjects in an eye-catching manner. Gainsborough’s Blue Boy is one of the most famous and recognized portraits of all time, painted with very long brushes and thin oil colour to achieve the shimmering effect of the blue costume. Gainsborough was also noted for his elaborate background settings for his subjects.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood achieved considerable influence after its foundation in 1848 with paintings that concentrated on religious, literary, and genre subjects executed in a colourful and minutely detailed style. Its artists included John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and subsequently Edward Burne-Jones. Also associated with it was the designer William Morris, whose efforts to make beautiful objects affordable for everyone led to his wallpaper and tile designs to some extent defining the Victorian aesthetic and instigating the Arts and Crafts movement. The Royal Society of Arts is an organisation committed to the arts and culture.

The Royal Academy in London is a key organisation for the promotion of the visual arts in England. Major schools of art in England include the six-school University of the Arts London, which includes the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Chelsea College of Art and Design; Goldsmiths, University of London; the Slade School of Fine Art (part of University College London); the Royal College of Art; and The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (part of the University of Oxford). The Courtauld Institute of Art is a leading centre for the teaching of the history of art. Important art galleries in the United Kingdom include the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern (the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year).

Heritage And Tourism Of England

A number of umbrella organisations are devoted to the preservation and public access of both natural and cultural heritage, including English Heritage and the National Trust. Membership with them, even on a temporary basis, gives priority free access to their properties thereafter.

English Heritage is a governmental body with a broad remit of managing the historic sites, artefacts and environments of England. It is currently sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. English Heritage manages more than 400 significant buildings and monuments in England. They also maintain a register of thousands of listed buildings, those which are considered of most importance to the historic and cultural heritage of the country.

The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty is a charity that also maintains multiple sites. One of the largest landowners in the United Kingdom, the Trust owns almost 250,000 hectares of land and 780 miles of the coast. Its properties include over 500 historic houses, castles, archaeological and industrial monuments, gardens, parks and nature reserves.

17 of the 25 United Kingdom UNESCO World Heritage Sites fall within England. Some of the best known of these include Hadrian’s Wall, Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites, Tower of London, Jurassic Coast, Westminster, Roman Baths in Bath, Saltaire, Ironbridge Gorge, and Studley Royal Park. The northernmost point of the Roman Empire, Hadrian’s Wall, is the largest Roman artefact anywhere: it runs a total of 73 miles in northern England.

London’s British Museum hosts a collection of more than seven million objects is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world, sourced from every continent, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginning to the present. The library has two of the four remaining copies of the original Magna Carta (the other two copies are held in Lincoln Castle and Salisbury Cathedral) and has a room devoted solely to them. The British Library Sound Archive has over six million recordings, many from the BBC Sound Archive, including Winston Churchill’s wartime speeches.

The British Library in London is the national library and is one of the world’s largest research libraries, holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats; including around 25 million books. The most senior art gallery is the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, which houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The Tate galleries house the national collections of British and international modern art; they also host the famously controversial Turner Prize. The Ashmolean Museum was founded in 1677 from the personal collection of Elias Ashmole, was set up in the University of Oxford to be open to the public and is considered by some to be the first modern public museum. In 2011 there were more than 1,600 museums in England. Most museums and art galleries are free of charge.

A blue plaque, the oldest historical marker scheme in the world, is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the UK to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person or event. The scheme was the brainchild of politician William Ewart in 1863 and was initiated in 1866.

It was formally established by the Royal Society of Arts in 1867, and since 1986 has been run by English Heritage. The first plaque was unveiled in 1867 to commemorate Lord Byron at his birthplace, 24 Holles Street, Cavendish Square, London. Examples that commemorate events include John Logie Baird’s first demonstration of the television at 22 Frith Street, Westminster, W1, London, and the first sub-4-minute mile run by Roger Bannister on 6 May 1954 at Oxford University’s Iffley Road Track.

Tourism plays a significant part in the economic life of England. In 2018, the United Kingdom as a whole was the world’s 10th most visited country for tourists, and 17 of the United Kingdom’s 25 UNESCO World Heritage Sites fall within England. VisitEngland is the official tourist board for England. VisitEngland’s stated mission is to build England’s tourism product, raise Britain’s profile worldwide, increase the volume and value of tourism exports and develop England and Britain’s visitor economy. In 2020, the Lonely Planet travel guide rated England as the second-best country to visit that year, after Bhutan.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Arts, Heritage and Tourism is the minister with responsibility for over-tourism in England, including museums, art galleries, public libraries and the National Archives.

Literature Of England

Early authors such as Bede and Alcuin wrote in Latin. The period of Old English literature provided the epic poem Beowulf and the fragmentary The Battle of Maldon, the sombre and introspective The Seafarer, The Wanderer, the pious Dream of the Rood, The Order of the World, and the secular prose of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, along with Christian writings such as Judith, Cædmon’s Hymn and hagiographies. Following the Norman conquest, Latin continued amongst the educated classes, as well as Anglo-Norman literature.

Middle English literature emerged with Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, along with Gower, the Pearl Poet and Langland. William of Ockham and Roger Bacon, who were Franciscans, were major philosophers of the Middle Ages. Julian of Norwich, who wrote Revelations of Divine Love, was a prominent Christian mystic. With the English Renaissance literature in the Early Modern English style appeared. William Shakespeare, whose works include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, remains one of the most championed authors in English literature.

Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sydney, Thomas Kyd, John Donne, and Ben Jonson are other established authors of the Elizabethan age. Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes wrote on empiricism and materialism, including the scientific method and social contract. Filmer wrote on the Divine Right of Kings. Marvell was the best-known poet of the Commonwealth, while John Milton authored Paradise Lost during the Restoration.

Some of the most prominent philosophers of the Enlightenment were John Locke, Thomas Paine, Samuel Johnson and Jeremy Bentham. More radical elements were later countered by Edmund Burke who is regarded as the founder of conservatism. The poet Alexander Pope with his satirical verse became well regarded. The English played a significant role in romanticism: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, John Keats, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake and William Wordsworth were major figures.

In response to the Industrial Revolution, agrarian writers sought a way between liberty and tradition; William Cobbett, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc were the main exponents, while the founder of guild socialism, Arthur Penty, and cooperative movement advocate G. D. H. Cole are somewhat related. Empiricism continued through John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell, while Bernard Williams was involved in analytics. Authors from around the Victorian era include Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells and Lewis Carroll. Since then England has continued to produce novelists such as George Orwell, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, C. S. Lewis, Enid Blyton, Aldous Huxley, Agatha Christie, Terry Pratchett, J. R. R. Tolkien, and J. K. Rowling.

Due to the expansion of English into a world language during the British Empire, literature is now written in English across the world. Writers often associated with England or for expressing Englishness include Shakespeare (who produced two tetralogies of history plays about the English kings), Jane Austen, Arnold Bennett, and Rupert Brooke (whose poem “Grantchester” is often considered quintessentially English). Other writers are associated with specific regions of England; these include Charles Dickens (London), Thomas Hardy (Wessex), A. E. Housman (Shropshire), and the Lake Poets (the Lake District). The English playwright and poet William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time.

The 20th-century English crime writer Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. Agatha Christie’s mystery novels are outsold only by Shakespeare and The Bible. Described as “perhaps the 20th century’s best chronicler of English culture”, the non-fiction works of George Orwell include The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the north of England. Orwell’s eleven rules for making tea appear in his essay “A Nice Cup of Tea”, which was published in the London Evening Standard on 12 January 1946.

In 2003 the BBC carried out a UK survey entitled The Big Read to find the “nation’s best-loved novel” of all time, with works by English novelists J. R. R. Tolkien, Jane Austen, Philip Pullman, Douglas Adams and J. K. Rowling making up the top five on the list. In 2005, some 206,000 books were published in the United Kingdom and in 2006 it was the largest publisher of books in the world. The Royal Society of Literature was founded in 1820, by King George IV, to “reward literary merit and excite literary talent”. The society is a cultural tenant at London’s Somerset House.

The Music Of England

England has a long and rich musical history. In the United Kingdom, more people attend live music performances than football matches. The traditional folk music of England is centuries old and has contributed to several genres prominently; mostly sea shanties, jigs, hornpipes and dance music. It has its own distinct variations and regional peculiarities. Ballads featuring Robin Hood, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in the 16th century, are an important artefact, as are John Playford’s The Dancing Master and Robert Harley’s Roxburghe Ballads collections.

Some of the best-known songs are Greensleeves, Pastime with Good Company, Maggie May and Spanish Ladies amongst others. Many nursery rhymes are of English origin such as Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, Roses Are Red, Jack and Jill, London Bridge Is Falling Down, The Grand Old Duke of York, Hey Diddle Diddle and Humpty Dumpty. Traditional English Christmas carols include We Wish You a Merry Christmas, The First Noel, I Saw Three Ships and God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.

The United Kingdom has, like most European countries, undergone a roots revival in the last half of the 20th century. English music has been an instrumental and leading part of this phenomenon, which peaked at the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s. The English Musical Renaissance was a hypothetical development in the late 19th and early 20th century, when English composers, often those lecturing or trained at the Royal College of Music, were said to have freed themselves from foreign musical influences, to have begun writing in a distinctively national idiom, and to have equalled the achievement of composers in mainland Europe.

The achievements of the Anglican choral tradition following on from 16th-century composers such as Thomas Tallis, John Taverner and William Byrd have tended to overshadow instrumental composition. The semi-operatic innovations of Henry Purcell were significant. Classical music attracted much attention from 1784 with the formation of the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival, which was the longest running classical music festival of its kind until the final concerts in 1912. George Frideric Handel found important royal patrons and enthusiastic public support in England. He spent most of his composing life in London and became a national icon, creating some of the most well-known works of classical music, especially his English oratorios, The Messiah, Solomon, Water Music, and Music for the Royal Fireworks. One of Handel’s four Coronation Anthems, Zadok the Priest (1727), composed for the coronation of George II, has been performed at every subsequent British coronation, traditionally during the sovereign’s anointing. The Royal Academy of Music is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke of Wellington. Famous academy alumni include Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Sir Elton John and Annie Lennox.

The emergence of figures such as Edward Elgar and Arthur Sullivan in the 19th century showed a new vitality in English music. In the 20th century, Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett emerged as internationally recognised opera composers, and Ralph Vaughan Williams and others collected English folk tunes and adapted them to the concert hall. Cecil Sharp was a leading figure in the English folk revival. The Proms, an annual summer season of daily classical music concerts, is a significant event in British musical life. The Last Night of the Proms features patriotic music.

A new trend emerged from Liverpool in 1962. The Beatles became the most popular musicians of their time, and in the composing duo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, popularized the concept of the self-contained music act. Before the Beatles, very few popular singers composed the tunes they performed. The “Fab Four” opened the doors for other acts from England such as The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Cream, The Kinks, The Who, Eric Clapton, David Bowie, Queen, Elton John, The Hollies, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Genesis, Dire Straits, Iron Maiden, The Police to the globe. Many musical genres have origins in (or strong associations with) England, such as British invasion, progressive rock, hard rock, Mod, glam rock, heavy metal, Britpop, indie rock, gothic rock, shoegazing, acid house, garage, trip hop, drum and bass and dubstep. The Sex Pistols and The Clash were pioneers of punk rock. Some of England’s leading contemporary artists include George Michael, Sting, Seal, Rod Stewart, The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Oasis, Blur, Radiohead, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Coldplay, Def Leppard, Muse, Arctic Monkeys, Amy Winehouse, Adele and Ed Sheeran.

The Cinema Of England

England (and the UK as a whole) has had a considerable influence on the history of the cinema, producing some of the greatest actors, directors and motion pictures of all time, including Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, David Lean, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, John Gielgud, Peter Sellers, Julie Andrews, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet and Daniel Day-Lewis. Hitchcock and Lean are among the most critically acclaimed of all time. Hitchcock’s first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1926), helped shape the thriller genre in film, while his 1929 film, Blackmail, is often regarded as the first British sound feature film.

Major film studios in England include Pinewood, Elstree and Shepperton. Some of the most commercially successful films of all time have been produced in England, including two of the highest-grossing film franchises (Harry Potter and James Bond). Ealing Studios in London has a claim to being the oldest continuously working film studio in the world. Famous for recording many motion picture film scores, the London Symphony Orchestra first performed film music in 1935.

The BFI Top 100 British films include Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), a film regularly voted the funniest of all time by the UK public. English producers are also active in international co-productions and English actors, directors and crew feature regularly in Hollywood films. Ridley Scott was among a group of English filmmakers, including Tony Scott, Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson and Adrian Lyne, who emerged from making 1970s UK television commercials. The UK film council ranked David Yates, Christopher Nolan, Mike Newell, Ridley Scott and Paul Greengrass the five most commercially successful English directors since 2001. Other contemporary directors from England include Sam Mendes, Guy Ritchie and Steve McQueen. Current actors include Tom Hardy, Daniel Craig, Benedict Cumberbatch and Emma Watson. Acclaimed for his motion-capture work, Andy Serkis opened The Imaginarium Studios in London in 2011. The visual effects company Framestore in London has produced some of the most critically acclaimed special effects in modern film. Many successful Hollywood films have been based on English people, stories or events. The ‘English Cycle’ of Disney animated films include Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book, Robin Hood and Winnie the Pooh.

The Theatre Of England

The peak of English drama and theatre is said to be the Elizabethan Age; a golden age in English history where the arts, drama and creative work flourished. Morality plays emerged as a distinct dramatic form around 1400 and flourished in the early Elizabethan era in England. Characters were often used to represent different ethical ideals. Everyman, for example, includes such figures as Good Deeds, Knowledge and Strength, and this characterisation reinforces the conflict between good and evil for the audience. The Castle of Perseverance (c. 1400–1425) depicts an archetypal figure’s progress from birth through to death. Horestes (c. 1567), a late “hybrid morality” and one of the earliest examples of an English revenge play, brings together the classical story of Orestes with a Vice from the medieval allegorical tradition, alternating comic, slapstick scenes with serious, tragic ones. Also important in this period were the folk dramas of the Mummers Play, performed during the Christmas season. Court masques were particularly popular during the reign of Henry VIII. The first permanent English theatre, the Red Lion, opened in 1567. The first successful theatres, such as The Theatre, opened in 1576. The establishment of large and profitable public theatres was an essential enabling factor in the success of English Renaissance drama.

Archaeological excavations on the foundations of the Rose and the Globe in the late 20th century showed that all the London theatres had individual differences, but their common function necessitated a similar general plan. The public theatres were three stories high and built around an open space at the centre. Usually polygonal in plan to give an overall rounded effect, although the Red Bull and the first Fortune were square. The three levels of inward-facing galleries overlooked the open centre, into which jutted the stage: essentially a platform surrounded on three sides by the audience. The rear side was restricted for the entrances and exits of the actors and seating for the musicians. The upper level behind the stage could be used as a balcony, as in Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra, or as a position from which an actor could harangue a crowd, as in Julius Caesar.

The playhouses were generally built with timber and plaster. Individual theatre descriptions give additional information about their construction, such as flint stones being used to build the Swan. Theatres were also constructed to be able to hold a large number of people. One of the main uses of costume during the Elizabethan era was to make up for the lack of scenery, set, and props on stage. It created a visual effect for the audience, and it was an integral part of the overall performance. Since the main visual appeal on stage were the costumes, they were often bright in colour and visually entrancing. Colours symbolised social hierarchy, and costumes were made to reflect that. For example, if a character was royalty, their costume would include purple. The colours, as well as the different fabrics of the costumes, allowed the audience to know the status of each character when they first appeared on stage.

The growing population of London, the growing wealth of its people, and their fondness for spectacle produced a dramatic literature of remarkable variety, quality, and extent. Genres of the period included the history play, which depicted English or European history. Shakespeare’s plays about the lives of kings, such as Richard III and Henry V, belong to this category, as do Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II and George Peele’s Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First. History plays dealt with more recent events, like A Larum for London which dramatizes the sack of Antwerp in 1576. Tragedy was a very popular genre. Marlowe’s tragedies were exceptionally successful, such as Dr. Faustus and The Jew of Malta. The audiences particularly liked revenge dramas, such as Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy. The four tragedies considered to be Shakespeare’s greatest (Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth) were composed during this period.

Costumes were collected in inventory. More often than not, costumes wouldn’t be made individually to fit the actor. Instead, they would be selected out of the stock that theatre companies would keep. A theatre company reused costumes when possible and would rarely get new costumes made. Costumes themselves were expensive, so usually, players wore contemporary clothing regardless of the time period of the play. The most expensive pieces were given to higher class characters because costuming was used to identify social status on stage. The fabrics within a playhouse would indicate the wealth of the company itself. The fabrics used the most were: velvet, satin, silk, cloth-of-gold, lace, and ermine.

Comedies were common. A subgenre developed in this period was the city comedy, which deals satirically with life in London after the fashion of Roman New Comedy. Examples are Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday and Thomas Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Though marginalised, the older genres like pastoral (The Faithful Shepherdess, 1608), and even the morality play (Four Plays in One, ca. 1608–13) could exert influences. After about 1610, the new hybrid subgenre of the tragicomedy enjoyed an efflorescence, as did the masque throughout the reigns of the first two Stuart kings, James I and Charles I.

The re-opening of the theatres in 1660 after the Restoration of Charles II signalled a renaissance of English drama. With the restoration of the monarch in 1660 came the restoration of and the reopening of the theatre. English comedies written and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710 are collectively called Restoration comedy. Restoration comedy is notorious for its sexual explicitness, a quality encouraged by Charles II (1660–1685) personally and by the rakish aristocratic ethos of his Royal court. For the first time, women were allowed to act, putting an end to the practice of the boy-player taking the parts of women. Socially diverse audiences included both aristocrats, their servants and hangers-on, and a substantial middle-class segment. Its dramatists stole freely from English Jacobean and Caroline plays, and even from Greek and Roman classical comedies, combining the various plotlines in adventurous ways.

Restoration audiences liked to see good triumph in their tragedies and rightful government restored. In comedy, they liked to see the love-lives of the young and fashionable, with a central couple bringing their courtship to a successful conclusion (often overcoming the opposition of the elders to do so). Heroines had to be chaste, but were independent-minded and outspoken; now that they were played by women, there was more mileage for the playwright in disguising them in men’s clothes or giving them narrow escape from rape. These playgoers were attracted to the comedies by up-to-the-minute topical writing, by crowded and bustling plots, by the introduction of the first professional actresses, and by the rise of the first celebrity actors. This period saw the first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn. In the mid-1690s, a brief second Restoration comedy renaissance arose, aimed at a wider audience.

The unsentimental or “hard” comedies of John Dryden, William Wycherley, and George Etherege reflected the atmosphere at Court and celebrated with frankness an aristocratic macho lifestyle of unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest. The Earl of Rochester, real-life Restoration rake, courtier and poet, is flatteringly portrayed in Etherege’s The Man of Mode (1676) as a riotous, witty, intellectual, and sexually irresistible aristocrat, a template for posterity’s idea of the glamorous Restoration rake (actually never a very common character in Restoration comedy). The single play that does most to support the charge of obscenity levelled then and now at Restoration comedy is probably Wycherley’s masterpiece The Country Wife (1675), whose title contains a lewd pun and whose notorious “china scene” is a series of sustained double entendres.

During the second wave of Restoration comedy in the 1690s, the “softer” comedies of William Congreve and John Vanbrugh set out to appeal to a more socially diverse audience with a strong middle-class element, as well as to female spectators. The comic focus shifts from young lovers outwitting the older generation to the vicissitudes of marital relations. In Congreve’s Love for Love (1695) and The Way of the World (1700), the give-and-take set pieces of couples testing their attraction for one another have mutated into witty prenuptial debates on the eve of marriage, as in the latter’s famous “Proviso” scene. Vanbrugh’s The Provoked Wife (1697) has a light touch and more humanly recognisable characters, while The Relapse (1696) has been admired for its throwaway wit and the characterisation of Lord Foppington, an extravagant and affected burlesque fop with a dark side.

As a reaction to the decadence of Charles II era productions, sentimental comedy grew in popularity. This genre focused on encouraging virtuous behaviour by showing middle-class characters overcoming a series of moral trials. Playwrights like Colley Cibber and Richard Steele believed that humans were inherently good but capable of being led astray. Through plays such as The Conscious Lovers and Love’s Last Shift they strove to appeal to an audience’s noble sentiments so that viewers could be reformed. The Restoration spectacular hit the London public stage in the late 17th-century Restoration period, enthralling audiences with action, music, dance, moveable scenery, baroque illusionistic painting, gorgeous costumes, and special effects such as trapdoor tricks, “flying” actors, and fireworks.

Today there are a variety of theatres in London’s West End. Andrew Lloyd Webber dominated the West End for many years; his musicals also conquered Broadway and were made into films. The prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company operates out of Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon and performs primarily, but not exclusively, his works. Important modern playwrights are Alan Ayckbourn, John Osborne, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard and Arnold Wesker.

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The English People

The English people are an ethnic group and nation native to England, who speak the English language and share a common history and culture. The English identity is of early medieval origin when they were known in Old English as the Angelcynn (‘race or tribe of the Angles’). Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples who migrated to Great Britain around the 5th century AD.

The English largely descend from two main historical population groups – the tribes who settled in southern Britain following the withdrawal of the Romans (including Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians), and the partially Romanised Britons already living there. Collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons, they founded what was to become the Kingdom of England by the early 10th century, in response to the invasion and minor settlement of Danes that began in the late 9th century. This was followed by the Norman Conquest and limited settlement of Anglo-Normans in England in the later 11th century. Some definitions of English people include, while others exclude, people, descended from later migration into England.

England is the largest and most populous country of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In the Acts of Union 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland merged to become the Kingdom of Great Britain. Over the years, English customs and identity have become fairly closely aligned with British customs and identity in general.

The English Nationality

England itself has no devolved government. The 1990s witnessed a rise in English self-awareness. This is linked to the expressions of national self-awareness of the other British nations of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland which take their most solid form in the new devolved political arrangements within the United Kingdom – and the waning of a shared British national identity with the growing distance between the end of the British Empire and the present.

Many recent immigrants to England have assumed a solely British identity, while others have developed dual or mixed identities. The use of the word “English” to describe Britons from ethnic minorities in England is complicated by most non-white people in England identifying as British rather than English. In their 2004 Annual Population Survey, the Office for National Statistics compared the ethnic identities of British people with their perceived national identity. They found that while 58% of white people in England described their nationality as “English”, the vast majority of non-white people called themselves “British”.

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The Historical And Genetic Origins Of The English

Replacement Of Neolithic Farmers By Bell Beaker Populations

Recent genetic studies have suggested that Britain’s Neolithic population was largely replaced by a population from North Continental Europe characterised by the Bell Beaker culture around 2400 BC, associated with the Yamnaya people from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. This population lacked genetic affinity to some other Bell Beaker populations, such as the Iberian Bell Beakers, but appeared to be an offshoot of the Corded Ware single grave people, as developed in western Europe. It is currently unknown whether these Beaker peoples went on to develop Celtic languages in the British Isles, or whether later Celtic migrations introduced Celtic languages to Britain.

The close genetic affinity of these Beaker people to Continental North Europeans means that British and Irish populations cluster genetically very closely with other Northwest European populations, regardless of how much Anglo-Saxon and Viking ancestry was introduced during the 1st millennium.

Anglo-Saxons, Vikings And Normans

The influence of later invasions and migrations on the English population has been debated, as studies that sampled only modern DNA have produced uncertain results and have thus been subject to a large variety of interpretations. More recently, however, ancient DNA has been used to provide a clearer picture of the genetic effects of these movements of people.

One 2016 study, using Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon era DNA found at grave-sites in Cambridgeshire, calculated that ten modern-day eastern English samples had 38% Anglo-Saxon ancestry on average, while ten Welsh and Scottish samples each had 30% Anglo-Saxon ancestry, with a large statistical spread in all cases. However, the authors noted that the similarity observed between the various sample groups was likely to be due to more recent internal migration.

Another 2016 study conducted using evidence from burials found in northern England, found that a significant genetic difference was present in bodies from the Iron Age and the Roman period on the one hand, and the Anglo-Saxon period on the other. Samples from modern-day Wales were found to be similar to those from the Iron Age and Roman burials, while samples from much of modern England, East Anglia in particular, were closer to the Anglo-Saxon-era burial. This was found to demonstrate a “profound impact” from the Anglo-Saxon migrations on the modern English gene pool, though no specific percentages were given in the study.

A third study combined the ancient data from both of the preceding studies and compared it to a large number of modern samples from across Britain and Ireland. This study found that modern southern, central and eastern English populations were of “a predominantly Anglo-Saxon-like ancestry” while those from northern and southwestern England had a greater degree of indigenous origin.

A major 2020 study, which used DNA from Viking-era burials in various regions across Europe, found that modern English samples showed nearly equal contributions from a native British “North Atlantic” population and a Danish-like population. While much of the latter signature was attributed to the earlier settlement of the Anglo-Saxons, it was calculated that up to 6% of it could have come from Danish Vikings, with a further 4% contribution from a Norwegian-like source representing the Norwegian Vikings. The study also found an average 18% admixture from a source further south in Europe, which was interpreted as reflecting the legacy of French migration under the Normans.

The History Of The English People

Early Middle Ages

The first people to be called “English” were the Anglo-Saxons, a group of closely related Germanic tribes that began migrating to eastern and southern Great Britain, from southern Denmark and northern Germany, in the 5th century AD, after the Romans had withdrawn from Britain. The Anglo-Saxons gave their name to England (“Engla land”, meaning “Land of the Angles”) and to the English.

The Anglo-Saxons arrived in a land that was already populated by people commonly referred to as the “Romano-British”—the descendants of the native Brittonic-speaking population that lived in the area of Britain under Roman rule during the 1st–5th centuries AD. The multi-ethnic nature of the Roman Empire meant that small numbers of other peoples may have also been present in England before the Anglo-Saxons arrived. There is archaeological evidence, for example, of an early North African presence in a Roman garrison at Aballava, now Burgh-by-Sands, in Cumbria: a 4th-century inscription says that the Roman military unit “Numerus Maurorum Aurelianorum” (“unit of Aurelian Moors”) from Mauretania (Morocco) was stationed there. Although the Roman Empire incorporated peoples from far and wide, genetic studies suggest the Romans did not significantly mix into the British population.

The exact nature of the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons and their relationship with the Romano-British is a matter of debate. The traditional view is that a mass invasion by various Anglo-Saxon tribes largely displaced the indigenous British population in southern and eastern Great Britain (modern-day England with the exception of Cornwall). This is supported by the writings of Gildas, who gives the only contemporary historical account of the period and describes the slaughter and starvation of native Britons by invading tribes (aduentus Saxonum). Furthermore, the English language contains no more than a handful of words borrowed from Brittonic sources.

This view was later re-evaluated by some archaeologists and historians, with a more small-scale migration being posited, possibly based around an elite of male warriors that took over the rule of the country and gradually acculturated the people living there. Within this theory, two processes leading to Anglo-Saxonisation have been proposed. One is similar to culture changes observed in Russia, North Africa and parts of the Islamic world, where a politically and socially powerful minority culture becomes, over a rather short period, adopted by a settled majority. This process is usually termed “elite dominance”. The second process is explained through incentives, such as the Wergild outlined in the law code of Ine of Wessex which produced an incentive to become Anglo-Saxon or at least English speaking. Historian Malcolm Todd writes, “It is much more likely that a large proportion of the British population remained in place and was progressively dominated by a Germanic aristocracy, in some cases marrying into it and leaving Celtic names in the, admittedly very dubious, early lists of Anglo-Saxon dynasties. But how we identify the surviving Britons in areas of predominantly Anglo-Saxon settlement, either archaeologically or linguistically, is still one of the deepest problems of early English history.”

An emerging view is that the degree of population replacement by the Anglo-Saxons, and thus the degree of survival of the Romano-Britons, varied across England and that as such the overall settlement of Britain by the Anglo-Saxons cannot be described by any one process in particular. Large-scale migration and population shift seem to be most applicable in the cases of eastern regions such as East Anglia and Lincolnshire, while in parts of Northumbria, much of the native population likely remained in place as the incomers took over as elites. In a study of place names in northeastern England and southern Scotland, Bethany Fox found that the migrants settled in large numbers in river valleys, such as those of the Tyne and the Tweed, with the Britons moving to the less fertile hill country and becoming acculturated over a longer period. Fox describes the process by which English came to dominate this region as “a synthesis of mass-migration and elite-takeover models.”

Vikings And the Danelaw

From about 800 AD waves of Danish Viking assaults on the coastlines of the British Isles were gradually followed by a succession of Danish settlers in England. At first, the Vikings were very much considered a separate people from the English. This separation was enshrined when Alfred the Great signed the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum to establish the Danelaw, a division of England between English and Danish rule, with the Danes occupying northern and eastern England.

However, Alfred’s successors subsequently won military victories against the Danes, incorporating much of the Danelaw into the nascent kingdom of England. Danish invasions continued into the 11th century, and there were both English and Danish kings in the period following the unification of England (for example, Æthelred II (978–1013 and 1014–1016) was English but Cnut (1016–1035) was Danish).

Gradually, the Danes in England came to be seen as ‘English’. They had a noticeable impact on the English language: many English words, such as anger, ball, egg, got, knife, take, and they, are of Old Norse origin, and place names that end in –thwaite and –by are Scandinavian in origin.

English Unification

The English population was not politically unified until the 10th century. Before then, there were a number of petty kingdoms which gradually coalesced into a heptarchy of seven states, the most powerful of which were Mercia and Wessex. The English nation state began to form when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms united against Danish Viking invasions, which began around 800 AD. Over the following century and a half, England was, for the most part, a politically unified entity, and remained permanently so after 959.

The nation of England was formed in 937 by Æthelstan of Wessex after the Battle of Brunanburh, as Wessex grew from a relatively small kingdom in the South West to become the founder of the Kingdom of the English, incorporating all Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the Danelaw.

Norman And Angevin Rule

The Norman conquest of England during 1066 brought Anglo-Saxon and Danish rule of England to an end, as the new French speaking Norman elite almost universally replaced the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and church leaders. After the conquest, “English” normally included all natives of England, whether they were of Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian or Celtic ancestry, to distinguish them from the Norman invaders, who were regarded as “Norman” even if born in England, for a generation or two after the Conquest. The Norman dynasty ruled England for 87 years until the death of King Stephen in 1154, when the succession passed to Henry II, House of Plantagenet (based in France), and England became part of the Angevin Empire until 1214.

Various contemporary sources suggest that within 50 years of the invasion most of the Normans outside the royal court had switched to English, with Anglo-Norman remaining the prestige language of government and law largely out of social inertia. For example, Orderic Vitalis, a historian born in 1075 and the son of a Norman knight, said that he learned French only as a second language. Anglo-Norman continued to be used by the Plantagenet kings until Edward I came to the throne. Over time the English language became more important even in the court, and the Normans were gradually assimilated, until, by the 14th century, both rulers and subjects regarded themselves as English and spoke the English language.

Despite the assimilation of the Normans, the distinction between ‘English’ and ‘French’ survived in official documents long after it had fallen out of common use, in particular in the legal phrase Presentment of Englishry (a rule by which a hundred had to prove an unidentified murdered body found on their soil to be that of an Englishman, rather than a Norman if they wanted to avoid a fine). This law was abolished in 1340.

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