UNITED KINGDOM

Dec

United Kingdom

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Categories: United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (usually shortened to the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain) is a country and sovereign state that lies to the northwest of mainland Europe, with its only land border with the Republic of Ireland. It extends over all of the island of Great Britain and the north-east part of the island of Ireland. The United Kingdom is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, and its ancillary bodies of water, including the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, St George’s Channel, and the Irish Sea. The United Kingdom is linked to France and Continental Europe by the Channel Tunnel.

The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy composed of four constituent countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The current monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who is also the Queen and Head of State of fifteen other Commonwealth Realms, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica.

The Crown Dependencies of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, formally possessions of the Crown, form a federacy with the United Kingdom collectively known as the British Islands. The UK also has fourteen overseas territories, all remnants of the British Empire which at its height encompassed a quarter of the world’s surface and population.

Although Britain was the foremost great power during the 19th century, the economic cost of two world wars and the decline of its empire in the latter half of the 20th century diminished Britain’s status in global affairs. However, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a nuclear power, a member of the G8, the world’s fifth largest economy, and having the second highest defence spending, Britain remains an important political, economic and military world power. It is a member of the European Union and the Commonwealth of Nations.

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Nov

Key advantages of doing business in the UK

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Categories: Business in the UK

Top 20 reasons to do business in the UK
Source: UK Trade & Investment (UKTI Trade Services)
What makes the UK Europe’s leading investment destination for companies relocating and developing their global business? We look at 20 of the top reasons setting the UK apart from other countries.

1. The easiest place to set up and run a business in Europe: The World Bank found that it takes 13 days to set up a business in UK, compared to the European average of 32 days. It ranks the UK first in Europe and sixth in the world to operate a business. Source: World Bank

2. Low tax rate environment for foreign investors: The top corporate rate will be 28 per cent from April 2008, below most of the UK’s core competitors. The UK has reduced its corporate tax rate from over 50% in the early 1980s down to one of the lowest in the industrialised world. The UK’s highest personal tax band, at 40 per cent, is one of the lowest in the EU. Source: Forbes Tax Misery Index.

3. One of the most flexible labour markets in Europe: The World Bank ranks the UK the second best place in the Europe to employ workers, just behind Denmark. Source World Bank

4. Top talent: According to the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES), the UK has the top six universities in Europe and two of the top three globally. Source: The Times.

5. Least barriers to entrepreneurship in the world: The OECD noted that the UK is second in the world for Product Market Regulation behind Australia, has the least barriers to entrepreneurship in the world and has the third least barriers to trade and investment in the world. Source: OECD

6. World leader in innovation: The UK research base ranks second globally only to the USA making it a natural and productive home for innovative firms.

7. One of the most stable political environments to do business: According to Transparency International, the UK is one of the most transparent (least corrupt) countries in the world. It has a higher rating than France, Germany, USA and Japan.

8. Booming economy: The UK has one of the highest GDP growth rates in Europe, well above the European and Eurozone averages. Source: OECD

9. One of the easiest countries to register a property: To register a property, the UK is ranked above France, Germany, Ireland and Italy. Source: Cushamn and Wakefield

10. Commitment to improving the planning regime: The recent Energy White Paper by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), and the Government-commissioned Barker 2 Review of Land-use Planning and Economic Development, outline speedier planning consents for businesses.

11. Productivity rapidly increasing: Historically, the UK had lower productivity than its main competitors, but this is changing and the UK has closed the gap with many countries and overtaken others.

12. Speaking in the international language of business: operating in English gives firms in the UK a natural advantage when communicating globally.

13. Progressive communications network: The UK has the most extensive broadband market among the G7 countries. It is third for competitiveness after Japan and Canada.

14. Home to Europe’s number one city for business: London was voted the top city for the 17th year running in 2006, ranking first for easy access to markets, qualified staff, external and internal transport links, telecommunications, availability of office space and languages spoken.

15. Springboard to Europe: The UK is the gateway to the European Union’s 27 member states, the biggest single market in the world with a population of nearly 500 million. Source: Eurostat.

16. Number one location for European headquarters: More overseas companies set up their European headquarters in the UK than anywhere else.

17. Olympic opportunities: London will host the Olympic Games in 2012. Procurement started in 2007. Contracts will be available for firms of all sizes and the total budget will run into billions.

18. Outstanding transport links: there are direct flights to all major destinations worldwide and also high-speed rail services to major European destinations. Heathrow is Europe’s largest air hub; read more about its ongoing expansions . London boasts one of the world’s largest overground/underground rail networks and is the hub for the UK’s domestic transport networks.

19. Cultural diversity: more languages are spoken in the UK than anwhere else in the world (over 300) making businesses of all nationalities feel instantly welcome.

20. Magnet for foreign investment: In 2006, the UK attracted and retained over one trillion US dollars of investment: the highest in Europe and the second largest in the world.

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Oct

The Shortcut to Setting up a Business

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Categories: Forming Your Company - the shortcut to setting up

The 2006 Companies Act ratifies existing best practice and makes setting up UK operations easier than ever. Company formation has been simplified. Setting up a business in the UK has been easier than in most other European countries for a long time.

The Companies Act introduced last year hasn’t changed this – and it promises to make it easier for businesses to operate once they have been set up. The Act’s purpose is to replace – and simplify – thousands of pages of earlier corporate legislation.

It effectively takes into account how small businesses operate – for instance, by making accounting and financial reporting easier for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), removing the requirement for a company secretary and annual shareholder meetings, and clarifying rules on share capital.

Better company law
The legislation is still substantial, with 1,300 sections, but it’s a significant improvement, according to Charles Mayo, partner at law firm Simmons & Simmons. “It is more modern, more understandable and more flexible,” he says. “The end result should be much better company law – and better company law is key to the UK’s competitiveness.”

Global best practice
The new legislation, scheduled for implementation before the end of 2008, also aims to bring the way business is done up to the standards of global best practice.

For listed companies – including those listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) – the Act encourages sustainable investment by increasing shareholders’ engagement with the companies they own. It clarifies existing practice on directors’ responsibilities, for instance, and makes communicating with shareholders easier.

“My view is that the responsible and well-advised director should welcome, not fear, the codification of directors’ duties,” says Mayo. “It seems to me that what matters is the quality of decision-making.”

The common-sense approach
One reason for the Government’s light-touch approach is the fact that the legislation is the result of extensive consultation with business.

The Act has the backing of, among others, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) – the UK’s chief employers’ organisation. A second reason is the UK’s long tradition of common-sense, proportional regulation.

A trend towards clarity
For example, at the 2005 CBI conference Gordon Brown, who was Chancellor at the time, discarded the requirement that listed companies produce an operating and financial review (OFR) detailing non-financial risks.

Instead, the Act simply requires that companies disclose information about their key suppliers. In short, the legislation changes only what needs to be changed. In drafting it, the UK Government learned from the impact of more draconian regimes, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, on inward investment.

In fact, the clarification of rules – on, for example, AIM listings – is more likely to attract than discourage UK listings, because it boosts some of the UK regulatory regime’s existing advantages, including transparency.

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Sep

Economy

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Categories: Economy

UK Economic Overview
Source: the British Embassy, Washington D.C.

The UK is the worlds fifth largest economy and has weathered the recent economic downturn better than any other G8 country.

The UK Governments economic strategy aims to improve growth and employment by creating economic stability based on low inflation and prudent government borrowing, and a better environment for long-term investment in industry, infrastructure, science and technology, and education and training.

Britains economy is based primarily on private enterprise which accounts for approximately four-fifths of both output and employment. Since the global recession of 1990 – 1992 the UK has experienced continuous growth and low inflation. Employment levels are the highest ever recorded.

The UK is Europes leading business center and has the least restricted business environment within the EU. Economist Intelligence Unit e-readiness rankings, 2003 rate the UK in third place globally, equal to the US and the Netherlands, well ahead of Germany and Japan in 13th and 24th places, respectively.

The service sector accounts for about two-thirds of GDP and the UK has easily the largest financial services trade surplus in the world. London remains the largest center in the world for international financial services business and Londons pre-eminence in Europes financial services industry is increasing, with international banks centralizing many of their European operations in London. Britains absence from the Euro has not prevented London from becoming effectively the international financial capital for the Euro; 31% of global foreign exchange trading of Euros is done in London. The United Kingdom has a very strong economic relationship with the United States.

The UK is the largest foreign investor in the United States and the US is the largest foreign investor in the UK. Nearly 45% of UK outward investment goes to the US and 40% of overseas direct investment in the UK is from the US. Around one million Americans are employed by UK companies and the same number of British people are employed by US businesses.

Source: Wikipedia, the fee encyclopedia

The City of London is a major business and commercial centre, alongside New York City as the leading centre of global finance. For over twenty-five years, the British economy has corresponded with what has been described by some since the 1980s as the Anglo-Saxon model, focusing on the principles of liberalisation, the free market, and low taxation and regulation. Based on market exchange rates, the United Kingdom is the fifth largest economy in the world, and the second largest in Europe after Germany. The British were the first in the world to enter the Industrial Revolution, and, like most industrialising countries at the time, initially concentrated on heavy industries such as shipbuilding, coal mining, steel production, and textiles. The empire created an overseas market for British products, allowing the United Kingdom to dominate international trade in the 19th century. However, as other nations industrialised and surplus labour from agriculture began to dry up, the United Kingdom began to lose its economic advantage. As a result, heavy industry declined, by degrees, throughout the 20th century. The British service sector, however, has grown substantially, and now makes up about 73% of GDP.

The service sector of the United Kingdom is dominated by financial services, especially in banking and insurance. London is the world’s largest financial centre with the London Stock Exchange, the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange, and the Lloyd’s of London insurance market all based in The City. It also has the largest concentration of foreign bank branches in the world. In the past decade, a rival financial centre in London has grown in the Docklands area, with HSBC and Barclays Bank relocating their head offices there. Many multinational companies that are not primarily UK-based have chosen to site their European or rest-of-world headquarters in London: an example is the US financial services firm Citigroup. The Scottish capital, Edinburgh, also has one of the large financial centres of Europe. Tourism is very important to the British economy. With over 27 million tourists a year, the United Kingdom is ranked as the sixth major tourist destination in the world.

The British manufacturing sector, however, has greatly diminished, relative to the economy as a whole, since World War II. It is still a significant part of the economy, but only accounted for one-sixth of national output in 2003. The British motor industry is a significant part of this sector, although it has diminished with the collapse of MG Rover and most of the industry is foreign owned. Civil and defence aircraft production is led by the United Kingdom’s largest aerospace firm, BAE Systems, and the continental European firm EADS, the owners of Airbus. Rolls-Royce holds a major share of the global aerospace engines market. The chemical and pharmaceutical industry is also strong in the UK, with the world’s second and sixth largest pharmaceutical firms (GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, respectively) being based in the UK.

The Creative Industries accounted for 7.3% GVA in 2004 and grew at an average of 5% per annum between 1997 and 2004. The United Kingdom’s agriculture sector accounts for only 0.9% of the country’s GDP. The UK has large coal, natural gas, and oil reserves, although the natural gas and oil reserves are diminishing. Primary energy production accounts for about 10% of Gross domestic product (GDP), one of the highest shares of any industrial state. Government involvement throughout the economy is exercised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (currently Gordon Brown) who heads HM Treasury, but the Prime Minister (currently Tony Blair), is First Lord of the Treasury; the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the Second Lord of the Treasury. However since 1997, the Bank of England, headed by the Governor of the Bank of England, has control of interest rates and other monetary policy. The UK government has greatly increased public sector spending (i.e. government spending of taxes) since 1995, and annual spending on investment in infrastructure has grown from £5.6 thousand million in 1997 to £29 thousand million in 2006.

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Jun

Geography

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Categories: Geography

Most of England consists of lowland terrain, with some mountainous terrain in the north-west (Cumbrian Mountains of the Lake District), north (the upland moors of the Pennines and limestone hills of the Peak District) and south-west (Exmoor and Dartmoor) by the Tees-Exe line. Lower ranges include the limestone hills of the Isle of Purbeck, Cotswolds and Lincolnshire Wolds, and the chalk downs of the Southern England Chalk Formation. The main rivers and estuaries are the Thames, Severn and the Humber Estuary. The largest urban area is Greater London. England’s highest mountain is Scafell Pike, which is in the Lake District 978 m (3,208 ft). Scotland’s geography is varied, with lowlands in the south and east and highlands in the north and west, including Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the British Isles at 1,344 m (4,406 ft). There are many long and deep sea arms, firths, and lochs. There are nearly eight hundred islands in Scotland, mainly west and north of the mainland, notably the Hebrides, Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands. In total, it is estimated that the UK includes around one thousand islands.

The panorama across Eskdale from Ill Crag, in the Lake DistrictWales is mostly mountainous, the highest peak being Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa) at 1,085 m or 3,560 ft above sea level. North of the mainland is the island of Anglesey (Ynys Môn). Northern Ireland, making up the north-eastern part of Ireland, is mostly hilly. The province is home to one of the UK’s World Heritage Sites, the Giant’s Causeway, which consists of more than 40,000 six-sided basalt columns up to 12 m (40 ft) high. Lough Neagh, the largest body of water in the British Isles, by surface area (388 km² / 150 mi²), can be found in Northern Ireland. The highest peak is Slieve Donard at 849 metres (2,786 ft) in the province’s Mourne Mountains.

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May

Demography

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Categories: Demography

At the April 2001 UK Census, the United Kingdom’s population was 58,789,194, the third largest in the European Union (behind Germany and France) and the twenty-first largest in the world. This had been estimated up to 59,834,300 by the Office for National Statistics in 2004. Two years later it had increased to 60.2 million, largely from net immigration, but also because of a rising birth rate and increasing life expectancy. The UK’s overall population density is one of the highest in the world. About a quarter of the population lives in England’s prosperous southeast and is predominantly urban and suburban, with an estimated 7,517,700 in the capital of London.

Along with Italy and Spain, the United Kingdom has one of the highest immigration rates in Europe. In some UK cities the percentage of ‘minority groups’ is large but is still less than half; for example, London (40.1%), Birmingham (34.4%), and Leicester (39.5%). The latest official figures (2005) show net immigration to the UK of 185,000 (down from a record high of 223,000 in 2004). A study by a city forecaster, however, contends that these figures are unreliable and that net immigration for 2005 was circa 400,000. Nonetheless, the proportion of foreign-born people in the UK population remains below that of some other European countries.

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Apr

Sports

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Categories: Sports

A number of major sports originated in the United Kingdom, including football, rugby, cricket and golf. The most popular sport in the UK is football. The UK does not compete as a nation in any major football tournament. Instead, the home nations compete individually as England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This is due to historical reasons and a level of disassociation with the other nations by fans. It is because of this four-team arrangement that the UK does not compete in football events at the Olympic Games. However, there are proposals for a united team taking part in the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, which are to be held in London. The English and Northern Irish football associations have confirmed participation in this team while the Scottish FA and the Welsh FA have declined to participate, fearing that it would undermine their independent status.

The UK is home to many world-renowned football clubs, such as Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool in England, and Celtic and Rangers in Scotland. Clubs compete in national leagues and competitions and some go on to compete in European competitions. British teams are generally successful in European Competitions and several have become European Cup/UEFA Champions League winners: Liverpool (five times), Manchester United (twice), Nottingham Forest (twice), Aston Villa, and Celtic. The English Premier League is also the most-watched football league in the world and is particularly popular in Asia: in the People’s Republic of China, matches attract television audiences between 100 million and 360 million, more than any other foreign sport.[78][79]. Also notable are Hibernian FC of Edinburgh, Scotland who were the first British club to participate in European Football.

The 90,000 capacity Wembley Stadium is the main sporting stadium of the UK. Between the demolition of the former ‘twin towers’ stadium and construction of the new one (completed in March 2007), Cardiff’s 73,000 seater Millennium Stadium served in this role. However, Wembley may yet be surpassed as the nation’s largest stadium if Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium undergoes further redevelopment to a possible 91,500 capacity. The early reference to the separate national identities in the UK is perhaps best illustrated by the game of cricket. Cricket was invented in England. There are league championships but the English national team dominates the game in Britain. There is no UK team. Some Welsh and Scottish players have played for England because neither Scotland nor Ireland have Test status and only play in One Day Internationals.

The UK has proved successful in the international sporting arena in rowing. It is widely considered that the sport’s most successful rower is Steven Redgrave who won five gold medals and one bronze medal at five consecutive Olympic Games as well as numerous wins at the World Rowing Championships and Henley Royal Regatta. Both forms of rugby are national sports. Rugby league originates from and is generally played in the North of England, whilst Rugby Union is played predominantly in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and Southern England. Having supposedly originated from the actions of William Webb Ellis at the town of Rugby, it is considered the national sport of Wales. In rugby league the UK plays as one nation – Great Britain – though in union it is represented by four nations: England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland (which consists of players from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland). England is the holder of the Rugby World Cup. Every four years the British and Irish Lions tour either Australia, New Zealand or South Africa. Here, rugby football differs internationally to association football, as the England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland (including Northern Ireland) teams combine to form the British and Irish Lions (essentially a British Isles team) although they compete separately in all other international competitions.

The Wimbledon Championships are international tennis events held in Wimbledon in south London every summer and are regarded as the most prestigious of the tennis calendar. Thoroughbred racing is also very popular throughout the UK. It originated under Charles II of England as the “Sport of Kings” and is a royal pastime to this day. World-famous horse races include the Grand National, the Epsom Derby and Royal Ascot. Golf is one of the most popular participation sports played in the UK, with St Andrews in Scotland being the sport’s home course. Cricket is also popular, although the popularity of the game is dramatically greater in England than in other parts of the UK, all four constituent nations as of 2006 compete at the One-Day International level – Scotland independently, Wales as part of the English team, and Northern Ireland as part of all-Ireland.

Shinty (or camanachd) (a sport derived from the same root as the Irish hurling and similar to bandy) is popular in the Scottish Highlands, sometimes attracting crowds numbering thousands in the most sparsely populated region of the UK. The country is closely associated with motorsport. Many teams and drivers in Formula One (F1) are based in the UK and drivers from Britain have won more world titles than any other country. The country also hosts legs of the F1 and World Rally Championship and has its own Touring Car Racing championship, the BTCC. The British Grand Prix takes place at Silverstone each July.

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Mar

Music

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Categories: Music

Composers William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, John Taverner, John Blow, Henry Purcell, Edward Elgar, Arthur Sullivan, William Walton, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett have made major contributions to British music, and are known internationally. Living composers include John Tavener, Harrison Birtwistle, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Oliver Knussen. Britain also supports a number of major orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Because of its location and other economic factors, London is one of the most important cities for music in the world: it has several important concert halls and is also home to the Royal Opera House, one of the world’s leading opera houses. British traditional music has also been very influential abroad.

The UK was, with the US, one of the two main countries in the development of rock and roll, and has provided bands including The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Pink Floyd, Queen, Elton John, David Bowie, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Status Quo, The Smiths, the Sex Pistols, The Clash, the Manic Street Preachers, Duran Duran, The Cure, Oasis, Blur, Radiohead and Coldplay. It has provided inspiration for many modern bands today, including Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, Babyshambles, The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand. Since then it has also pioneered in various forms of electronic dance music including acid house, drum and bass and trip hop, all of which were in whole or part developed in the United Kingdom. Acclaimed British dance acts include Underworld, Orbital, Massive Attack, The KLF, The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers and Portishead.

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Feb

Literature

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Categories: Literature

The earliest native literature of the territory of the modern United Kingdom was written in the Celtic languages of the isles. The Welsh literary tradition stretches from the 6th century. Irish poetry also represents a more or less unbroken tradition from the 6th century to the present day, with the Ulster Cycle being of particular relevance to Northern Ireland. Anglo-Saxon literature includes Beowulf, a national epic, but literature in Latin predominated among educated elites. After the Norman Conquest Anglo-Norman literature brought continental influences to the isles.

English literature emerged as a recognisable entity in the late 14th century, with the rise and spread of the London dialect of Middle English. Geoffrey Chaucer is the first great identifiable individual in English literature: his Canterbury Tales remains a popular 14th-century work which readers still enjoy today. Following the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in 1476, the Elizabethan era saw a great flourishing of literature, especially in the fields of poetry and drama. From this period, poet and playwright William Shakespeare stands out as arguably the most famous writer in the world. The English novel became a popular form in the 18th century, with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) and Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1745).

After a period of decline, the poetry of Robert Burns revived interest in vernacular literature, the rhyming weavers of Ulster being especially influenced by literature in Scots from Scotland. The following two centuries continued a huge outpouring of literary production. In the early 19th century, the Romantic period showed a flowering of poetry comparable with the Renaissance two hundred years earlier, with such poets as William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Lord Byron. The Victorian period was the golden age of the realistic English novel, represented by Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters (Charlotte, Emily and Anne), Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy.

World War I gave rise to British war poets and writers such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and Rupert Brooke who wrote (often paradoxically), of their expectations of war, and/or their experiences in the trench. The Celtic Revival stimulated new appreciation of traditional Irish literature, however, with the independence of the Irish Free State, Irish literature came to be seen as more clearly separate from the strains of British literature. The Scottish Renaissance of the early 20th century brought modernism to Scottish literature as well as an interest in new forms in the literatures of Scottish Gaelic and Scots. The English novel developed in the 20th century into much greater variety and was greatly enriched by immigrant writers. It remains today the dominant English literary form. Other well-known novelists include Arthur Conan Doyle, D. H. Lawrence, George Orwell, Salman Rushdie, Mary Shelley, J. R. R. Tolkien, Virginia Woolf and J.K. Rowling. Important poets include Elizabeth Barrett Browning, T. S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, John Milton, Alfred Tennyson, Rudyard Kipling, Alexander Pope, and Dylan Thomas.

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Jan

Theatre

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Categories: Theatre

The United Kingdom also has a vibrant tradition of theatre. Theatre was introduced to the UK from Europe by the Romans and auditoriums were constructed across the country for this purpose. By the medieval period theatre had developed with the mummers’ plays, a form of early street theatre associated with the Morris dance, concentrating on themes such as Saint George and the Dragon and Robin Hood. These were folk tales re-telling old stories, and the actors travelled from town to town performing these for their audiences in return for money and hospitality. The medieval mystery plays and morality plays, which dealt with Christian themes, were performed at religious festivals. The reign of Elizabeth I in the late 16th and early 17th century saw a flowering of the drama and all the arts. Perhaps the most famous playwright in the world, William Shakespeare, wrote around 40 plays that are still performed in theatres across the world to this day. They include tragedies, such as Hamlet (1603), Othello (1604), and King Lear (1605); comedies, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1594—96) and Twelfth Night (1602); and history plays, such as Henry IV, part 1—2.
The Elizabethan age is sometimes nicknamed “the age of Shakespeare” for the amount of influence he held over the era. Other important Elizabethan and 17th-century playwrights include Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and John Webster.

During the Interregnum 1642—1660, English theatres were kept closed by the Puritans for religious and ideological reasons. When the London theatres opened again with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, they flourished under the personal interest and support of Charles II. Wide and socially mixed audiences were attracted by topical writing and by the introduction of the first professional actresses (in Shakespeare’s time, all female roles had been played by boys). New genres of the Restoration were heroic drama, pathetic drama, and Restoration comedy. The Restoration plays that have best retained the interest of producers and audiences today are the comedies, such as William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1676), The Rover (1677) by the first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn, John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse (1696), and William Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700). Restoration comedy is famous or notorious for its sexual explicitness, a quality encouraged by Charles II (1660–1685) personally and by the rakish aristocratic ethos of his court.

In the 18th century, the highbrow and provocative Restoration comedy lost favour, to be replaced by sentimental comedy, domestic tragedy such as George Lillo’s The London Merchant (1731), and by an overwhelming interest in Italian opera. Popular entertainment became more important in this period than ever before, with fair-booth burlesque and mixed forms that are the ancestors of the English music hall. These forms flourished at the expense of legitimate English drama, which went into a long period of decline. By the early 19th century it was no longer represented by stage plays at all, but by the closet drama, plays written to be privately read in a “closet” (a small domestic room).

A change came in the late 19th century with the plays on the London stage by the Irishmen George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde and the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, all of whom influenced domestic English drama and vitalised it again. Today the West End of London has a large number of theatres, particularly centred around Shaftesbury Avenue. A prolific composer of the 20th century Andrew Lloyd Webber has dominated the West End for a number of years and his musicals have travelled to Broadway in New York and around the world, as well as being turned into films.