Британці, які вони є / The British as they are.

Great Britain is an island on the outer edge of the European continent, and its geographical situation has produced a certain insular spirit among its inhabitants, who tend, a little more perhaps than other people, to regard their own community as the centre of the world. The insularity produces a certain particularism among the numerous groups of whom the whole community is composed. The British look on foreigners in general with contempt and think that nothing is as well done elsewhere as in their own country. The British people have also been known as superior, snobbish, aloof, hypocritical and unsociable.

These characteristics have been noted by people from all over the world, but are they typical of all the Britons? The ordinary Briton was seen to be friendly and sociable. There are indeed two nations, with basically different outlooks and characters, in Britain. The two nations are defined simply as the rich and the poor. The traditional opinion about the British, or the English in earlier centuries, was based on the habits of those Britons who could afford to travel, the diplomats and merchants. English vanity and arrogance grew as England fought off the competition from other European countries and became the world’s leading trading nation, going on to industrialize rapidly.

Englishmen tend to be rather conservative, they love familiar things. They are hostile, or at least bored, when they hear any suggestion that some modification of their habits, or the introduction of something new and unknown into their lives, might be to their advantage. This conservatism, on a national scale, may be illustrated by reference to the public attitude to the monarchy, an institution that is held in affection and reverence by nearly all English people.

Britain is supposed to be the land of law and order. Part of the British sense for law and orderliness is a love of precedent. For an Englishman, the best of all reasons for doing something in a certain way is that it has always been done in that way.

The Britons are practical and realistic; they are infatuated with common sense. They are not misled by romantic delusions.

Їжа та напої у Британії (США) Food and Drink in Britain (the USA).

Meals and mealtimes in England are not the same in all families.

Breakfast is the first meal of the day. But it is often a rather hurried and informal meal. Most people do not have a full breakfast, and some have no breakfast at all apart from a hot drink. People who do have a full breakfast say that it is quite good. That is why the writer Somerset Maugham once gave the following advice: «If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts daily.”

At one o’clock comes a meal, which is dinner to some people, lunch for others. More than half the population has a hot dinner (sometimes called lunch) in the middle of the day, and a cool meal in the evening. Others have a light lunch at one, and a hot dinner in the evening. Many men work too far away from their homes to be able to go home for a hot meal in the middle of the day, and many schoolchildren, too, have their lunch in schools. But on Sundays the family sits down together. Sometimes the mother puts the food on the plates in the kitchen, carrying them into the dining-room afterwards; sometimes it is served from large dishes in the dining-room itself.

The next meal is tea, with slices of bread and butter, cakes, and of course, cups of tea. Mother and children may have their tea together at five o’clock in the afternoon, or they may wait a little for father to come in after work.

As it was said above, in the evening some people have a cool meal, which they usually call high tea (or supper). Others have a main meal in the evening, called dinner

10. Стародавні часи. Завоювання Британії кельтами / The Dawn of British History. The Celts.

About 3000 years BC many parts of Europe, including the British Isles, were inhabited by a people called the Iberians who are still found in the North of Spain (later they were mixed with the Picts, Scots and Celts).

During the period from the 6^th-3^rd c. BC a people called the Celts, tall and fair, spread all over Europe from the east to the west. The Celts were ancient people who lived in Central and Western Europe during the New Stone Age, Bronze Age and moved to the British Isles from the continent, from what are now France and Germany during the Iron Age. Whole tribes migrated to the Isles, warriors with their chiefs, their women and their children. The invasion of these tribes known as Celtic tribes went on from the 8^th – 7^th cc. BC to the 1^st c. BC.

The first Celtic comers were the Gaels, but the Brythons arrived some two centuries later and pushed the Gaels to Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall (West Wales), taking possession of the south and east. The Scots crossed over to Ireland and settled there. Later the Scots returned to the larger island and in time the name of Scotland was given to the country. Powerful Celtic tribes, the Brythons (Britons), held most of the country, and the southern half of the island was named Britain after them.

Then after a considerable lapse of time, somewhat about the 1^st c. BC, the most powerful tribe, the Belgae, claimed possession of the south-east while part of the Brythons was pushed on to Wales though the rest stayed in what is England today, and probably gave their name to the whole country (Britain).

Thus the whole of Britain was occupied by the Celts who merged with the Picts and Scots, as well as with the Alpine part of the population; latter predominated in the west while the rest of the British Isles became distinctly Celtic in language and structure of society.