England - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Overview

England is a country

Country

A country is a region legally identified as a distinct entity in political geography. A country may be an independent sovereign state or one that is occupied by another state, as a non-sovereign or formerly sovereign political division, or a geographic region associated with a previously...

that is part of

Countries of the United Kingdom

Countries of the United Kingdom is a term used to describe England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. These four countries together form the sovereign state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which is also described as a country. The alternative terms, constituent...

the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. It shares land borders with Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

to the north and Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

to the west; the Irish Sea

Irish Sea

The Irish Sea separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. It is connected to the Celtic Sea in the south by St George's Channel, and to the Atlantic Ocean in the north by the North Channel. Anglesey is the largest island within the Irish Sea, followed by the Isle of Man...

is to the north west, the Celtic Sea

Celtic Sea

The Celtic Sea is the area of the Atlantic Ocean off the south coast of Ireland bounded to the east by Saint George's Channel; other limits include the Bristol Channel, the English Channel, and the Bay of Biscay, as well as adjacent portions of Wales, Cornwall, Devon, and Brittany...

to the south west, with the North Sea

North Sea

In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...

to the east and the English Channel

English Channel

The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...

to the south separating it from continental Europe

Continental Europe

Continental Europe, also referred to as mainland Europe or simply the Continent, is the continent of Europe, explicitly excluding European islands....

. Most of England comprises the central and southern part of the island of Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

in the North Atlantic. The country also includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly

Isles of Scilly

The Isles of Scilly form an archipelago off the southwestern tip of the Cornish peninsula of Great Britain. The islands have had a unitary authority council since 1890, and are separate from the Cornwall unitary authority, but some services are combined with Cornwall and the islands are still part...

and the Isle of Wight

Isle of Wight

The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...

.

The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but it takes its name from the Angles

Angles

The Angles is a modern English term for a Germanic people who took their name from the ancestral cultural region of Angeln, a district located in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany...

, one of the Germanic

Germanic peoples

The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...

tribes who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries.

Discussions

England's cultural contribution

History of England

Government of England

England in the Middle Ages

What affect has English imperialism had on the world?

The English Reformation

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Timeline

927 England is unified by Athelstan of England after a long process of annexation.

959 Edgar the Peaceable becomes king of all England.

1002 English king Æthelred II orders the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St. Brice's Day massacre.

1066 Harold Godwinson is crowned King of England.

1066 The Battle of Stamford Bridge marks the end of the Viking invasions of England.

1066 William the Bastard (as he was known at the time) invades England beginning the Norman Conquest.

1066 William the Conqueror is crowned king of England, at Westminster Abbey, London.

1174 William I of Scotland, a key rebel in the Revolt of 1173–1174, is captured at Alnwick by forces loyal to Henry II of England.

1189 Richard I "the Lionheart" is crowned King of England.

1192 Richard the Lion-Heart is captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on his way home to England after signing a treaty with Saladin ending the Third crusade.

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Quotations

Lords and Commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a Nation not slow and dull, but of quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, suttle and sinewy to discours, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that humane capacity can soar to.

John Milton, Aeropagitica, 1644.

I hope for nothing in this world so ardently as once again to see that paradise called England. I long to embrace again all my old friends there.

Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany|Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Quoted in The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici by Christopher Hibbet, page 292.

I am American bred; I have seen much to hate here - much to forgive. But in a world where England is finished and dead, I do not wish to live.

Alice Duer Miller|Alice Duer Miller, The White Cliffs, 1940

Non Angli sed Angeli (Not Angles but Angels).

Pope Gregory I, commenting on the beauty of English captives exposed for sale in Rome

There'll always be an England, while there's a country lane. Wherever there's a cottage small, beside a field of grain

Ross Parker|Ross Parker and Hughie Charles|Hughie Charles, Song, 1939

I know an Englishman. Being flattered, is a lamb; threatened, a lion.

George Chapman, Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany before 1636

An Englishman's home is his castle.

Proverb, seventeenth century.

Living in England, provincial England, must be like being married to a stupid, but exquisitely beautiful wife.

Margaret Halsey|Margaret Halsey, With Malice Toward Some, 1938

The south-west wind roaring in from the Atlantic.... is, I think the presiding genius of England.

Hilaire Belloc, Places, 1940

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