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In 1993 more than half of the hundred most-borrowed books from Britain's public libraries were romantic novels. Many were of the middlebrow type. The rest were more simplistic stories about romance. The British publisher which sells more books than any other is Mills & Boon, whose books are exclusively of this type.

It is more than 200 years since poetry stopped being the normal mode of literary self-expression. And yet, poetry at the end of the twentieth century is surprisingly, and increasingly, popular in Britain. Books of poetry sell in comparatively large numbers. Their sales are not nearly as large as sales of novels, but they are large enough for a few small publishers to survive entirely on publishing poetry. Many poets are asked to do readings of their work on radio and at arts festivals. Many of these poets are not academics and their writing is accessible to non-specialists. Perhaps the 'pop' idiom and the easy availability of sound recording have made more people comfortable with spoken verse then they were fifty years ago.

The fine arts

If you are fond of painting you can visit either the National Gallery or the Tate Gallery.

The National Gallery is remarkable because all the great schools of painting represent here: Italian, Dutch, Spanish, French etc. The Gallery was founded in 1824 and many famous pictures of old masters were brought to London for everybody to see and for the painters to get their inspiration from. The truly British art of painting flourished. It contains the greatest collection of pictures in Britain by brilliant British painters such as Hogarth, Constable, Turner, Gainsborough, Reynolds and others.

The Tate Gallery has a rich collection of British painting of all periods too. It was set up by Henry Tate, a sugar manufacturer in 1897. Henry Tate was a very rich man and collected paintings. Today one can also see pictures of foreign painters of the 19^th and 20^th centuries impressionists and post-impressionists in particular. There are About three hundred oils and nineteen thousand water colours and drawings. There are a lot of paintings by the 16^th century English artists there. You can also see many works by the English painter William Turner. Most of his paintings are connected with the sea theme.

In the Tate Gallery one can see works by modern painters, Pablo Picasso among them. There are many interesting sculptures there. The collection is rather big. Henry Moore’s works can be seen in this gallery. He was a famous British sculpture. The paintings of this gallery impress everyone who visits it.

Painting and sculpture are not as widely popular as music is in Britain. There is a general feeling that you have to be a specialist to appreciate them, especially if they are contemporary. Small private art galleries, where people might look at paintings with a view to buying them, are rare. Nevertheless, London is one of the main centres of the international collector's world. The two major auction houses of Sotheby's and Christie's are 'world-famous.

Until the i 98os, the country's major museums and galleries charged nothing for admission. Most of them now do so, although sometimes payment is voluntary. This has caused a lot of complaint that a great tradition of free education has been lost.

Museums of London

Madame Tissues is a museum of wax figures. Outstanding politicians, sportsmen, actors, military men are represented there. There is the so-called Chamber of horrors in the museum. Criminals and scenes of murders are exhibited there. They produce a frightening impression. The museum attracts hundreds of visitors daily.

At the Science Museum one can see the first locomotive, rocket, the latest models of aeroplanes and what not.

The Museum of British transport will tell you the story of public transport in Britain.

If you have keen on sculpture, architecture and ancient things, you can visit one of the most interesting and largest museums of London and the whole world. It is the British museum. To begin with, it is famous for its library. It has a copy of every book than is printed in the English language. Therefore there are more than eight million books there. The British museum library has a big collection of old and new manuscripts which they keep in glass cases. You can also find the first English books printed by Caxton. Caxton was the first English printer. He printed his first book in 1477. In the reading hall of the British museum library many famous people read and worked. V. Lenin and K. Marx included the latter studied most of the material for his book «The Capital» their.

The British museum is famous not only for its library. It has also a priceless collection of sculptures ceramics, coins engraving and oriental art. It houses unit collection of Italian drawings. The British museum is the most important place of archaeological study in the World with unique prehistoric collections. It takes one a day or so to do the whole museum. One can’t help admiring the British museum collections. They are worth seeing.

Parks of London

London has many parks and gardens. The best known are Hyde Park, Regent's Park and St. James's Park. They are all within easy reach of the centre of London.

Hyde Park is a royal park since 1536. It was once part of the forest where Henry VIII hunted wild animals. Hyde Park now has 146 hectares of parkland, and people are allowed to walk or sit and lie on the grass. The Serpentine is a lake in the middle of the park. In summer you can swim in the Serpentine or go out in a boat. It is a custom for some people to swim in it on Christmas Day. Hyde Park is famous for its Speaker's Corner, where people go when they want to tell other people about their political opinions.

Regent's Park is in the north-west of London. It is the home of the London Zoo. There are more than six thousand animals and birds in the Zoo. One can reach the Zoo by boat that goes along the Regent's canal. In summer one can visit an open-air theatre and enjoy a play by Shakespeare. There are also children's playgrounds and tennis courts.

St. James's Park is the oldest and the smallest of the royal parks. It is near Buckingham Palace. There is a lake in St. James's Park which is famous for its water-birds. The pelicans were originally given to Charles n by a Russian ambassador. Hundreds of people who work in the offices nearby come to this park to rest and eat their lunch.

Housing

Almost everybody in Britain dreams of living in a detached house; 'that is, a house which is a separate building. The saying, 'An Englishman's home is his castle' is well-known. It illustrates the desire for privacy and the importance attached to ownership which seem to be at the heart of the British attitude to housing.

A large, detached house not only ensures privacy. It is also a status symbol. At the extreme end of the scale there is the aristocratic 'stately home' set in acres of garden. Of course, such a house is an unrealistic dream for most people. But even a small detached house, surrounded by garden, gives the required suggestion of rural life which is dear to the hearts of many British people. Most people would be happy to live in a cottage, and if this is a thatched cottage, reminiscent of a pre-industrial age, so much the better.

Most people try to avoid living in blocks of flats. Flats, they feel, provide the least amount of privacy. With a few exceptions, mostly in certain locations in central London, flats are the cheapest kind of home. The people who live in them are those who cannot afford to live anywhere else.

The dislike of living in flats is very strong. In the millions of poorer people lived in old, cold, uncomfortable nineteenth century houses, often with only an outside toilet and no bathroom. During the next twenty years many of them were given smart new 'high rise' blocks of flats to live in which, with central heating and bathrooms, were much more comfortable and were surrounded by grassy open spaces. But people hated their new homes. They said they felt cut off from the world all those floors up. They missed the neigh-burliness. They couldn't keep a watchful eye on their children playing down there in those lovely green spaces. The new high-rise blocks quickly deteriorated. The lifts broke down. The lights in the corridors didn't work. Windows got broken and were not repaired. There was graffiti all over the walls.

In theory, there is no objective reason why these high-rise blocks could not have been a success. In other countries millions of people live reasonably happily in flats. But in Britain they were a failure because they do not suit British attitudes. The failure has been generally recognized for several years now. No more high-rises are being built. At the present time, only 4% of the population live in one. Only 20% of the country's households live in flats of any kind.

Traffic

Public transport services in urban areas, as elsewhere in Europe, suffer from the fact that there is so much private traffic on the roads that they are not as cheap, as frequent or as fast as they otherwise could be. They also stop running inconveniently early at night. Efforts have been made to speed up journey times by reserving certain lanes for buses, but so far there has been no widespread attempt to give priority to public transport vehicles at traffic lights.

An interesting modern development is that trams, which disappeared from the country's towns during the 1950's and 1960's, are now making a comeback. Research has shown that people seem to have more confidence in the reliability of a service which runs on tracks, and are therefore readier to use a tram than they would be to use an ordinary bus.

Britain is one of the few countries in Europe where double-decker buses are a common sight. Although single-deckers have also been in use since the 1960's, London still has more than 3,000 double-deckers in operation. In their original form they were 'hop-on, hop-off' buses. That is, there were no doors, just an opening at the back to the outside. There was a conductor who walked around collecting fares while the bus was moving. However, most buses these days, including double-deckers, have separate doors for getting on and off and no conductor.

The famous London Underground, known as 'the tube', is feeling the effects of its age. It is now one of the dirtiest and least efficient of all such systems in European cities. However, it is still heavily used because it provides excellent connections with the main line train stations and with the suburbs surrounding the city.

Another symbol of London is the distinctive black taxi.

According to the traditional stereotype, the owner-drivers of London taxis, known as cabbies, are friendly Cockneys who never stop talking. While it may not be true that they are all like this, they all have to demonstrate, in a difficult examination, detailed familiarity with London's streets and buildings before they are given their licence. Normally, these traditional taxis cannot be hired by phone. You simply have to find one on the street. But there are also many taxi companies who get most of their business over the phone. Their taxis are known as 'minicabs'. They tend to have a reputation, not always justified, for unreliability as well as for charging unsuspecting tourists outrageous prices. However, taxis and minicabs are expensive and most British people rarely use them, except, perhaps, when going home late at night after public transport has stopped running, especially if they have been drinking alcohol.

Bibliography

1. Голицынский Ю. Великобритания. СПб. – КАРО, 2007

2. Книга для чтения к учебнику Английский язык за два года. / Сост. Г.В. Рогова, Ф.М. Рожкова. – М.: Просвещение, 2003

3. Кузнецова Н.Н. Английский для всех. – М.: Просвещение, 2005

4. Островский Б.С. Английский язык. – М.: Просвещение, 2002

5. James ODriscoll BRITAIN: The country and its people: an introduction for learners of English. – Oxford University Press, 1999

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