The Master Of Suspense

The name Hitchcook means 'suspense' and 'horhor'. He was the master. At a time when people used to go to the cinema to see their favourite film stars, they went to see Hitchcook films because of the director. Alfred Hitchcook was born in England in 1899. He was educated by Jesuits, then went into...

Devamını Oku..

Conversation Openers

Have you ever noticed that when someone introduces a topic of conversation, they frequently begin with an expression like 'Have you ever noticed..?' It is not really a question - it is more a way of 'teeing up' what you want to say - like a golfer placing his ball on the little plastic tee in order...

Devamını Oku..

Sonnet XVII

Sonnet XVII Shall I compare thee to a summer's day ? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May. And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines. And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from...

Devamını Oku..

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in 1564 and he died in 1616. Not much more is known about his life. But this has not stopped countless millions of people, in languages that Shakespeare himself newer knew, from thinkng of him as an intimate friend. His poetry is universal. It transcends both the language...

Devamını Oku..

Arriving in London

When you arrive at London Airport, you are faced with a choice of transport into the centre of town. There is a train, there is a bus, there are taxis (not cheap, unless you are with friends) and there is the usual selection of car-hire firms. If you arrive during the morning rush-hour it is best...

Devamını Oku..

Opera

Compared with Italy or Germany, Britain is not a very operatic country. But this is changing. Covent Garden is a superb opera house, on a par with the finest in the world. And there is now more opera in the provinces. It was a vicious circle: the standard works are in Italian, German and French,...

Devamını Oku..

The Beatles

Suddenly in 1963 schoolboys started brushing their hair forward and letting it grow over their collars.The four names John, Paul, George and Ringo were on eveyone's lips. And biology teachers throught England bought extra supplies of red fibre pens to correct the spelling of the word 'beetle' in...

Devamını Oku..

Equal Opportunities

Why do dustmen earn less than doctors ? Most doctors would give several good reasons; and not many dustmen would put the question so radically. But it cannot be denied that doctors have a satisfying job, they work in congenial surroundings and they enjoy considerable social status. Some would...

Devamını Oku..

Jaguar

The firm which built the E type and the XK 120 has only been known as Jaguar Cars Ltd. since 1945. The company started life in 1922 in Blackpool, a seaside town in the north-west of England. Their name was Swallow and they made sidecars. The sidecar business was successful and the two men who...

Devamını Oku..

Isaac Newton

It was a warm afternoon in late summer. Sitting in the orchard, Isaac Newton watched an apple fall to the ground. He was in a contemplative mood. "Why should that apple always descend perpendiculary to the ground?", he thought... "Why not sideways or upwards ?" Like other geniuses, Newton had...

Devamını Oku..

A Game Of Chance

The most popular pastime in Britain is a kind of gambling. There are no horses involved ... no greyhounds or boxers; no specialized knowledge is required; it is purely and simply a matter of chance. The name of the game is bingo and it is played by 6 million people in 1,600 clubs throughout the...

Devamını Oku..

Magistrates Courts

Most citizens never appear before a judge. If they have a brush with the law, they are more likely to find themselves in a magistrates' court. The atmosphere there is far less formal and intimidating than a law court. There are no wigs, no gowns, no jurry, and often no lawyers. The magistrates...

Devamını Oku..

Innocent Until Proved Guilty

Law Courts Film makers love the law courts. They are perfect dramatic setting. The scenery is impressive, the costumes are stylish, and there is suspense. The performers are the two barriseters (Counsel for the defence and Counsel for the prosecution), the prisoner, the judge and the twelve members...

Devamını Oku..

Birthday Cake

A Birthday cake is more than just something good to eat. At a flamboyant young Englishman'a birthday a giant cake was wheeled into the room on a trolley. Then, as all his friends began to sing 'Happy birtday to you...' the top of the cake burst open and a beautiful girl rose from the icing holding...

Devamını Oku..

Kew Gardens

Not many people go to Kew for the right reason. You can tell the ones who do. They look serious and enquiring, and keep writing things down in notebooks. Most people go to Kew simply because it is an extraordinarily beautiful place, not because they are serious botanists. The Royal Botanical Gardens...

Devamını Oku..

The King's Right Arm

In 1606 William the Conqueror put an arrow in King Harold's eye, and became the King of England. The first thing he wanted to do was to take stock of his new acquisition. But when he started asking questions, nobody knew the answers. England in the 11th century was a pretty disorganized palace....

Devamını Oku..

Lions On The Lawn

It's an expensive business being rich in England -as the Duke of Bedford and The Marquess of Bath will tel you. The Duke of Bedford has got one of the most impressive private art collections in the world. Apart from paintings by Rembrandt, Canaletto, Van Dyck and Gainsborough he has superb pieces...

Devamını Oku..

The Emerald Isle

Ireland is the 'Emerald Isle'. The deep green of the rolling Irish countryside has to be seen to be believed. And green is te colour of the national emblem - the humble shamrock, which Irishmen, from Dublin to Chicago, wear proudly in their buttonholes on St Patrick's day (March 17th). St Patrick...

Devamını Oku..

A Rip-Off

In some restaurants (not the best) the waiter gives you your bill but he does not take your money. You pay at the cash desk on your way out. This way the management can be sure that nobody slips out while the waiter's back is turned - without paying. But these restaurants have had to find ways...

Devamını Oku..

The Welsh

In the year 1415 a welsh soldier took a Londoner by the collar and forced him to eat a raw leek. The Londoner had been mocking his Welch accent and insulting his national emblem, the leek. The Welsh today are as proud of their language and their national emblem as they were four hundred years...

Devamını Oku..

Politeness Is A Thing of The Past

Our grandparents are shocked. Young people these days have no manners. The old courtesies have gone. Nobody shows any respect these days. With all due respect, our grandparents are wrong. People are no less polite than they used to be; they just express themselves differently. Certainly most of...

Devamını Oku..

Public Schools

There are five major banks in Britain. All five chairmen were educated at Winchester College or Eton College. The same two schools prduced the editor of The Times, the head of the Home Civil Service, the head of the Foreign Service and the two top men at the BBC - not to mention seven members of...

Devamını Oku..

Schools in Britain

At the age of five an english child lets go of his mother's apron strings and goes out into the wide world. For the next six years his world is the primary school. At the ripe old age of eleven, he moves on to secondary school where he continues to learn the traditional subjects: English, maths,...

Devamını Oku..

The Electronic Window

The British are avid watchers of television. Many people sit in front of the electronic window for as long as five hours every evening. Then, when the programmes come to an end, half the population switches off and goes to bed. The electricity companies have to make special arguments to cope with...

Devamını Oku..

Coronation Street

Coronation Street is somewhere in the north of England - probably in Manchester. The modest inhabitants are known to every person in England who is blind or under the age of one year old. There is a pub on the corner called The Rover's Return and a jeans factory close by. Elsie Tanner works in...

Devamını Oku..

Marriage British Style

True lovers don't need a good carriage to take them to the church-or even a Rolls Royce. This old Cockney song is nown and sung all over England: "Daisy, Daisy. Give me your answer,do. I'm half crazy. All for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage - I can't afford a carriage. But...

Devamını Oku..

Sunday Afternoon

Don't bother to consult a work of sociology, if you want to know what the English do in their spare time. Just go for a walk on one of the London commons on a Sunday afternoon. There are joggers and strollers, picnickers and sunbathers and there might be groups of young men practising Japanese...

Devamını Oku..

Some Famous Names in British Jazz

Chris Barber: Trombone, New Orleans revivalist, on the road again with his wife Ottilie Patterson. Graham Collier: Bass player, composer and arranger. An influential figure with other musicians. Johny Dankworth: Saxophone, Composer, arranger and band leader. He works with his wife, singer Cleo...

Devamını Oku..

The Band On The Wall

The fish porters in Manchester used to go to big, old 19th century pub - the George and Dragon. The atmosphere was warm (though maybe a little rough), the beer was good and there was music. In order to get more people in - or maybe to put the musicans out of throwing range of the customers, the...

Devamını Oku..

English Pub Signs

In days of old, when knights were bold, and most people in England were illiterate, men still liked to have a drink with their friends in an inn or an ale-house. So the inns put up pictorial signs to announce their existence. The tradition has never died out. The 73,000 pubs in Britain still have...

Devamını Oku..

A Penny For The Guy

On the fifth of November onfires are lit all over Britain. The tradition began in 1605. A band of discontented English Catholics hatched a plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament while king James I was present. One of the conspirators betrayed the plot and the buildings were searched from top...

Devamını Oku..

Literary Landscapes

Scholars see litarature as a history of styles and strucrure, influences and themes. But for most English people, the history of their literature is something much vaguer. It is an impressionistic collage of places and personalities. It begins with Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a band of...

Devamını Oku..

The Great Fire of London

100,000 people were made homeless. St. Paul cathedral was gutted. Over 32,000 houses were destroyed. Four-fifths of the old walled City of London was wiped out in four days and four nights. More than three hundred years later, the date is burned into the memories of all English people. The Great...

Devamını Oku..

In Case of Fire

A gentleman came down from his hotel bedroom and asked the night porter for a glass of water. He took it upstairs and reappeared moments later asking for another. The night porter was only too willing to oblige. When the gentleman came down for the fifteenth time, the porter (a man of no mean...

Devamını Oku..

Fortnum and Mason

Knocking over a mountain of tinned peas with a supermarket trolley is one of the embrassing hazards of modern shopping. But not Fortnum and Mason. There are no trolleys in this Piccadilly grocer's shop. The floors are croved with thick red carpet and the assistans wear pin-stripe trousers and...

Devamını Oku..

Beanz Meanz Heinz

A few years ago the famous canned food company, Heinz (it rhymes with lines) covered the advertisement hoardings of Britain with the slogan Beanz Means Heinz. It was a vivid illustration of how the letters 's' in beans and means is pronounced; but much more than that, a reminder of the quantity...

Devamını Oku..

Albert Able of Alberta

Hundreds of boring and repetitive jobs have been taken over by computers. They don't suffer from eye strain and they don't need holidays or sick leave. What's more they do exactly what you tell them to usually. During the fifties Time Magazine had a computer to deal with their subscription renewals....

Devamını Oku..

Wedding Presents

If you are invited to a wedding in England, you send a present to happy couple. If you are not invited you don't - the custom is fairly logical. Of course, if you think you should have been invited but weren't, you can always embarrass everybody by sending a handsome present anyway. Close friends...

Devamını Oku..

Gretna Green

If a sixteen-year old English girl's parents refused to let her marry, she used to have two options- either to obey them, or to run away to Gretna Green. In Gretna Green she might be married by the blacksmith. Her beloved would place the ring on the anvil, and the blacksmith could pronounce them...

Devamını Oku..

The Savoy

Statesmen go to Claridge's, businessmen stay at the Hilton. But actors and artists take rooms at The Savoy. The savoy of London is the most famous hotel in the world. Winston Churchill used to eat there every week when he was in London. Johann Strauss once played waltzes in the restaurant. And...

Devamını Oku..

A Lot Of Soap!

The little bar of soap in your hotel bathroom is all part of the service. But it's big business for somebody. Look at it this way. The buyer for an English chain of hotels calculates that the avarage guest stays for 1.6 nights. (That doesn't mean that he pack his bags at three o'clock in the morning...

Devamını Oku..

A Parson's Rassion

The Reverend Henry Morgan hid his excitement. He left the church quietly and walked home. He hung-up his cassock and put on an oil-stained pair of overalls. The year was 1910. An Anglican vicar in Worcestershire was about to test-drive the car that his son had built (Church of England vicars are...

Devamını Oku..

Kings of Speed

Three names dominated the record books in the first half of this century - Seagrave, Campbell and Cobb. Sir Henry Seagrave drove a Sunbeam and in 1927 raised the world land speed record to 203.9 mph (about 320.27 kph). Sir Malcolm Campbell drove his own car, Bluebird, and broke the record nine...

Devamını Oku..

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a could That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. ___ Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milk way, They stretched...

Devamını Oku..

The First of The Romantics

William Wordsworth spent his long life in one of the most beautiful regions of England the lake District. He and his friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge revolutionized English peotry in 1798 when they published The Lyrical Ballads. They were the first Romantics, and paved the way for poets like Keats,...

Devamını Oku..

A Common Language

The British and Americans are divided by a common language somebody once said. And there certainly are differences between Americans and British English. In England yo walk on the pavement; In the United States you keep on the sidewalk. Uncle Sam puts gasolene in his car, while the English fill...

Devamını Oku..

The British Police

There are a hundred and eight thousand policemen in Britain and eleven thousand policewomen. One for every five hundred members of the population. They are divided into forty-four regional forces. The Home Secretary may have overall responsibility for the police, but the different forces come...

Devamını Oku..

Keep Left

As you drive, away from the ferry boat, there is a large signpost on your left. It tells you about speed limits in England. Unfortunately, there isn't time to read it, unless you stop and cause a traffic jam. But the speed limits are well signposted on country roads-in miles per hour. 50 mph is...

Devamını Oku..

The Church of England

Westminister Abbey stands in the heart of London, next to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. It is the burial place of statesmen, and poets. Kings and Queens are crowned there. It is one of the oldest institutions of the Church of England. Five minutes walk away is Westminister Cathedral, the...

Devamını Oku..

Get Weaving

'Oh, I am a bachelor. I live all alone. And I work at the weaving trade. And the only, only thing. That I ever did wrong. Was to woo a fair, young maid.' The bachelor hero of this famous folk song worked in the oldest industry in England. He was a weaver. The British learned how to spin and weave...

Devamını Oku..