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LOSS OF EMPIRE LEA VES BRITAIN STILL SEEKING A NEW WORLD ROLE - AND A NEW SOURCE OF WEALTH WHEN THE NORTH SEA OIL RUNS DRY

Two World Wars and the power politics of the 20th century have wrought drastic changes in the small, island state that once held sway over the greatest empire the world has seen, that unfurled its flag in every quarter of the globe. Within the lifespan of a single generation, the term British Empire has been almost forgotten, though its ghosts haunt television and cinema screens with flickering images of durbars and red-coated regiments charging to tunes of glory. This loss of empire has left the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland still seeking a new world role - a search that is proving prolonged and painful for a nation that has given the world so much.

To many of the great nations she once ruled, and to many others, Britain left her greatest legacies of all - the poetic and expressive language in which Shakespeare wrote; and the principles of parliamentary democracy, hard won over many centuries and preserved at appalling cost in the two great struggles for survival which all but bled her to death.

Indeed, if the First World War left her seriously weakened, the Second left Britain shattered. Dominions and colonies were demanding - sometimes forcibly - the freedom and independence they, too, had fought for. Britain, her financial and economic resources devastated, had little choice but to start dismantling an empire that was becoming an increasingly insupportable burden.

Besides, the mother, country herself had embarked upon an expensive social revolution of her own - erecting the cradle-to-grave umbrella of the Welfare State. She could not afford that, either. But somehow, with much belt-tightening, it was done and, like so many things British, became an example for others to learn from and adopt.

Setting an example, 'doing the right thing', ranks high among the qualities valued by many Britons. In general they are proud of their country and its record - which has led many former subject nations to model their governments and institutions upon Britain's. Indoctrinated from childhood with ideals of sportsmanship, fair play' and social responsibility, they can also exhibit a dogged determination to get their 'own way, and a sublime faith in their ability to do so, Inventive and practical, they often succeed - by ingenuity or, as they put it, 'muddling through'.

Slow to anger, courageous and cunning when roused, they have disposed of adversaries who have taken their penchant for modesty, understatement and readiness to negotiate as signs of weakness. As recently a 1982, in a brief, bloody war fought 8000 miles from home, they destroyed a numerically superior, well-equipped Argentinian army, which had occupied one of their few remaining colonies, the Falkland Islands.

Apart from the fighting qualities of' the men engaged, a notable factor in this victory was the success of Britain's vertical takeoff Harrier jet fighter, a versatile and highly maneuverable aircraft. It was a typical product of British inventiveness, and the admiring American armed forces have bought hundreds. But not all such inventions are successfully exploited in Britain. From electronics to pharmaceuticals, aeronautical engineering to medical technology, too many British scientists have had to look overseas for the backing to exploited their discoveries - or have watched while other countries have made their ideas reality.

One cause has been a lack of technical expertise at the very top of many British firms; another a feeling that marketing and salesmanship are somehow distasteful - anything made in Britain was automatically the best, and any sensible person ought to know that.

Disillusionment came as postwar shortages in some products and prewar work practices reduced Britain's capacity to produce at competitive prices, and high-quality - often superior - products began to flow from overseas industries employing more advanced equipment and work methods. Notably successful in penetrating Britain's markets, both at home and overseas, were her former adversaries, Germany and Japan.

Britain is fighting back, but with over 3 million unemployed and once-great industries in decline, all her resources of brainpower, energy, sheer grit and will to win are needed if she is to resume a truly effective role in world affairs.

DIVIDED NATION There are encouraging signs of recovery. Prosperity has returned already to a large area of Britain - a huge triangle stretching across southern England between CAMBRIDGE, BRISTOL and BRIGHTON. Here are expanding new towns, such as Milton Keynes, Harlow, Stevenage and Crawley, and resuscitated older ones like Swindon. From HAMPSHIRE to the valleys of the CHILTERNS, villages have doubled in population. The electronics industry, much of it defense-related, is among the growth leaders of a new, high technology industrial revolution. However, the decline of the older' smokestack' industries - coal, iron and steel, textiles, heavy engineering and so on - has deeply affected Scotland, Wales, THE MIDLANDS and the north of England, creating major unemployment areas and draining away manpower to the more affluent south-east.

This was factor in an upsurge in regionalism in the 1 970s, when nationalist political parties in Scotland and Wales gained sufficient strength to make themselves felt in the General Election of 1974. Devolution, the dispersal of political power from the central parliament in Westminster to proposed new assemblies in Scotland and Wales, became dominant topic of political discussion. The issue was finally put to Scottish and Welsh voters by a referendum in 1979 - with the result that schemes for regional parliaments were abandoned.

The new realignment of industry and workers is, in fact, a fairly modest reversal of the huge population shifts generated by the mightiest social and economic upheaval of all - the Industrial Revolution that made the nation an empire and changed the world itself. British ingenuity was what sparked it; coal was what fueled it - coal by the billion tonnes won from seams scattered through England, Scotland and Wales.

The revolution created immense wealth and prestige for the country. It financed Britain's expansionist policies abroad and the military muscle to safeguard them; and the wealth of empire poured back to the mother country to complete the cycle. It also created poverty, squalor and misery as men, women and children were drawn into the insatiable maws of mines and factories. Wages were often at starvation level, working hours long and housing frequently congested - miles of brick terraces in streets blackened by the smoke that now enveloped the ever-expanding industrial towns and cities. With a few notable exceptions, the new factory owners and entrepreneurs paid scant attention to the cost in human terms of products stamped "British Made'.

Reform was slow, despite the efforts of a few philanthropically minded industrialists to improve the lives of their employees. Mill owners such as Sir Richard Arkwright, in the early years of the revolution, and Sir Titus Salt, in its Victorian heyday, were far ahead of their times. Arkwright (1732-92) and his son built two cotton mills In the Derbyshire village of Cromford - and lavished money on the village, building a church, a school and houses for themselves and their employees.

Titus Salt Titus Salt (1803-76) was a BRADFORD wool merchant's son, and by the 1840s owned four mills in the city. But he became sickened by the filth, overcrowding and pollution there, and by the conditions, endured by working people. On a beautiful, green-field site outside Bradford, he built not only an extraordinary new mill, but a whole village for its workers, incorporating the newest ideas in planning, engineering and hygiene. He paid good pensions 36 years before government ones were introduced, and built a school for 750 pupils, an exquisite church, almshouses - even a boathouse and dining room on the river, with boats for hire. The village, Saltaire, remains almost as he built it.

The paternalism of Salt and Arkwright, deeply religious men like many others of their time, sprang from a belief that the possession of wealth imposed a moral duty to improve the lot of the workers who had helped to create it. It was an attitude increasingly affordable (although by no means universal) as Britain rapidly became the wealthiest nation on earth, and though aggressively pursuing the expansion and consolidation of empire, British developed a genuinely held conviction that they were bringing order and civilization to the territories they had explored or conquered. At the pinnacle of imperial power, in the closing years of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th, this was truly, as the slogans of the time proclaimed, 'an empire on which the sun never sets'.

Huge areas of the world atlas were coloured pink, denoting a British possession; a quarter of the world's population owed allegiance to the British Crown. Britain saw herself as presiding over a brotherhood of nations, an attitude that found ultimate expression after the First World War, when the dominions secured equality in the comity of nations by their admission to the League of Nations.

The first seal crack in the edifice appeared only three years later - on Britain's own doorstep. For most of the 19th century and up to 1922, the United Kingdom embraced the territories of four historic peoples - the English. Scots, Welsh and Irish. Then, after centuries of bitter and -often bloody strife, 26 of IRELAND'S 32 countries broke away to form the Irish Free State. By 1931, the Statute of Westminster was acknowledging the self-governing status of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa as 'freely associated members' of the Commonwealth. However, Britain's territories still included India, and lands in east and West Africa, the Far East, Central America and the Mediterranean.

NEW ALLEGIANCES The Second World War (1939-45), in which beleaguered Britain fought Nazi Germany alone for 18 months, saw the USA and USSR emerge as the new 'super powers'. The whole pattern of international politics was being upended and after India and Pakistan gained independence in 1947, Britain's influence on world events declined steeply, By 1949 the term 'British' was being dropped from the Commonwealth's title - but the monarch remained at its head. Nations which had won independence even as republics could remain members, or rejoin, if they acknowledged the Crown as head of the Commonwealth. Burma and Ireland had opted out - but the six counties forming Northern Ireland remained firmly British, and are in continuous and violent conflict with those in both the north and south who wish them to join as one nation.

South Africa was forced to withdraw in 1961 over its racial policies, and Pakistan quit in 1972 when East Pakistan was recognized as Bangladesh. But 49 members remain, and their leaders find plenty of mutual concern to discuss at two-yearly meetings.

The Commonwealth may survive, but Britain has in fact surrendered political control of all but 17 small dependencies: Anguilla; Bermuda; British Antarctic Territory; British Indian Ocean Territory; British Virgin Islands; Cayman Islands; Falkland Islands; Falkland Islands Dependencies; Gibraltar; Hong Kong; Montserrat; Pitcairn, Ducie, Henderson and Oeno; St. Helena; St. Helena Dependencies (Ascension, Tristan da Cunha); the Isle of Man; Channel Islands; and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Hong Kong is due to return to Chinese rule in 1997, when Britain's '99 year lease runs out.

New naval and military roles more in keeping with Britain's reduced circumstances were evolved with the formation in 1949 of the NATO military alliance. Britain was a founder member and has allowed American airfields, missile-launching sites, submarine bases and radar tracking stations to be established on her soil. Nevertheless, Britain's own numerically small armed forces (about 325 000 strong) retain their own formidable defense and strike capabilities, armed with nuclear submarines, advanced aircraft and high-technology tanks, missiles, guns and communications equipment. There are 55 000 of them in the British Army of the Rhine.

Commitment to Europe in political and economic terms did not come until 1972, when Britain finally joined the European Community. Founded 20 years earlier by France, West Germany, Belgium. Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Italy, it was conceived as a new power bloc - a vehicle for cooperation between members at many levels. In fact it is composed of three organizations - the European Economic Community (EEC or Coin-most Market), European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). It is now the world's largest trading bloc, accounting for about one-third of all international trade. Britain's entry was achieved only after overcoming some bitter opposition abroad - notably from France - and equally bitter wrangles among her own politicians. Indeed, the internal arguments raged on even after Britain joined, culminating in a national referendum in 1975 -the only one it has ever held - when those wanting to quit the Common Market were substant ially out-voted.

Reluctance to recognize any authority out-side its own shores is perhaps understandable in a country which proudly proclaims itself ruled by a constitutional monarch and governed by the 'Mother of Parliaments' - a very model of enlightened democracy. Britain has no written constitution and Parliament is the country's supreme legislative body. It has three elements - the Queen, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The Lords is composed of hereditary and lifetime peers of the realm, the two archbishops and 24 senior bishops of the Church of England, and the 'Law Lords' (Lords of Appeal, senior judges). The 650 Members of the Commons (MPs) are elected by universal adult suffrage -British and Commonwealth citizens aged 18 or over who are resident in the country are eligible to vote in a secret ballot. Irish citizens living in Britain may also vote. Voting is not, however, compulsory, and 73 per cent of the 42 million eligible people voted in the elections of 1983.

Britain is governed in the name of the Crown, but the Queen meets her Lords and Commons only on symbolic occasions such as the ceremonial State Opening of Parliament. In practice, procedures ensure that legislative power is firmly in the hands of the Commons, although in principle both Houses must approve the measure proposed. The Queen follows the advice of the Prime Minister - the leader of the political group (party) able to command a majority vote in the Commons, and which forms the Government. As a member of the European Community, Britain also sends 81 elected representatives (MEPs) to sit in the European Parliament, and recognizes certain types of legislation passed there.

As it happens, about 70 per cent of the EEC budget goes to subsidize farm and food prices. And about the same percentage of Britain's total land area is farmed. Of a total of 243 000 farms and holdings, about half provide full-time work for only one person, while 31 000 larger farms account for half the total agricultural output, which topped US$16 billion in. 1983 - around 2.3 per cent of the Gross National Product (GNP). Fewer than 700 000 people work in agriculture, less than 3 per cent of the national workforce.

Some of their products helped to swell the EEC's colossal agricultural surpluses, in butter, beef, grain and milk powder. EEC support policies have encouraged large-scale crop growing and, to accommodate ever larger machines, thousands of kilometers of hedges, ditches and ancient boundaries have been bulldozed and deep-ploughed into oblivion. Some modern farms, fully mechanized to eliminate the farm worker, have begun to resemble factories an unlovely cluster of steel and concrete buildings, silage towers and sheds.

Perhaps fortunately, relatively little of Britain's landscape lends itself to large-scale operations of this nature, and mounting public concern about its environmental and ecological consequences is beginning to exert political pressure. Indeed, much of Britain's farming remains on more traditional lines. In the mountainous, rain-swept west and north, and their green-pastured, river-laced borderlands, pastoral farming predominates, with sheep grazing the hillsides and cattle browsing the lush meadows, as they have done for 1000 years and more. The lowlands of the south and east, sheltered from the rain of an Atlantic climate by the western highlands, have always favored crop growing. Wheat, barley, potatoes and vegetables are harvested from soils, which are richer and deeper than those of highland Britain.

Across the scarped uplands and clay vales of southern England the imprint of nearly 2000 years of cultivation can still be seen. Chalk downs bear the marks, however faint, of terraces (lynchets) farmed by early Iron Age people, as on Salisbury Plain and near the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire. Near Northleigh in the same county, a Romano-British village is surrounded by relics of the ridges and furrows of medieval communal cultivation.

A legacy of the great wealth created can be seen in the magnificent 'wool' churches built in towns and villages by pious merchants, manufacturers and farmers - particularly in the COTSWOLDS, where the warm tones of the mellowed local stone suffuse towns such as Chipping Campden and villages like Bibury.

Later, in the 18th and 19th centuries, landlords and clan chieftains swept tenant farmers and crofters from large areas of the Scottish HIGHLANDS, again to make way for sheep and deer. These wholesale evictions, often enforced by destroying crofts and cottages, became infamous as the 'Clearances', and led to large-scale emigration to North America, especially Canada. Much of the Scottish Highlands remains virtually empty to this day.

A landslide victory by the Labour Party over the Conservatives in the post-Second World War election of 1945 heralded another upsurge of social change in Britain: the establishment of the Welfare State and the nationalization of the Bank of England and basic industries - coal, gas and electricity, road, rail and air transport, and finally steel production. Between 1942 and 1945, as final victory in the war approached, a series of planning commissions had been set up to formulate domestic policies and plans for reconstruction after the war. The most far-reaching report was that prepared by Sir William Beveridge, which proposed the unification of social benefits to cover the whole population, from cradle to grave. From it sprang the National Health Service, providing free medical care for all, National Insurance, financed by employers, workers and the state; and National Assistance, which provided care for those not qualifying for insurance benefits, or in danger of becoming de stitute. Family Allowances - cash allowances for children - had already been introduced before Labour gained power.

This revolutionary legislation was pushed through at a time when Britain's overseas debts were high. Factories, homes and other buildings worth US$6800 million had been destroyed, one-third of the merchant fleet sunk and 60 per cent of export trade lost. A period of austerity and hardship followed: wartime food rationing continued until 1954; clothes were rationed until 1949. Problems were exacerbated by bleak events abroad -the 'Cold War' between Russia, her East European satellite countries and the Western powers; and the Korean War, in which British troops fought in the United Nations forces.

Labour barely scraped in with a majority of 6 in the 1950 General Election. In October 1951, the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, called another General Election and Labour was defeated by the Conservatives. Labour did not regain power for 13 years.

But despite continuing difficulties, Britain began to prosper. In 1957, an ebullient Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan (later Lord Stockton), was moved to remark that 'most of our people have never had it so good' - a phrase that returned to haunt him in less-prosperous times soon to come. But in the 1 960s 'Swinging Britain' became a world trendsetter in design and the expanding pop music and entertainment industries. A growing laissez-faire attitude to social behavior heralded the so-called Permissive Society.

But the textile industries of LANCASHIRE and YORKSHIRE were in massive decline, as was shipbuilding on the Tyne, CLYDE and MERSEYSIDE, and footwear manufacture in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. The energy crisis of the early 1970s and continuing recession in the 1980s merely accelerated the trend. Steel mills closed and even the car industry - centered on the WEST MIDLANDS, ESSEX, the Clyde Valley and Merseyside, and highly successful in the 1950s and 1960s - ran into serious trouble.

By 1973 the Welfare State had an already unacceptable half million unemployed; within a decade the total had exceeded 3 million.

However, responsibility lay not only with the recession and competition from younger and more efficient industries abroad: the very structure of British industry had been undergoing profound change. In 1909 half the country's manufactures were produced by 2000 or more firms; by 1970 only 140 firms were turning out the same proportion of a much larger quantity of goods.

The demise of the small firm and the rise of the large corporation - or the multinational, with its roots outside the country was all but complete.

Moreover, the decline in manufacturing brought a shift in emphasis to service Industries, and by 1983 13.2 million of the 20.8 million Britons in full employment were in these industries. They included a massive 4.6 million in public administration, health and education. The National Health Service alone employed nearly 1.3 million people - the biggest single employer in Europe and among the world's top ten. Only 5.5 million people were employed in manufacturing - a drop of 2.2 million in ten years.

On top of this industrial imbalance, the population is virtually static and ageing. The average family has barely the theoretical 2.1 children needed to replenish a population of 56 million. The population actually fell between 1974 and 1982, and despite calculations that it should reach 58 million by the year 2001, the real prospect is of zero growth'. A tradition of immigrants being outnumbered by emigrants also continues - 2.27 million left in 1973-82, while 1.8 million arrived. But improving health standards and medical advances are allowing more Britons to live longer - to pose further long-term problems of providing for more state pensions.

THE ISLAND RACE If the current social and economic outlook is giving many Britons that old beleaguered feeling again, it is a situation they have, as an insular people, long endured. In fact, about 7500 years ago Britain was finally cut off from the rest of Europe's landmass by the Strait of DOVER. This happened when the last cold phase of the Ice Age waned, and waters locked in the great ice sheets returned to the oceans. The North Sea submerged the forest-and marsh lowland, which had once joined Britain to the Continent. However, this did not stop migration. Neolithic settlers, who first arrived about 6000 years ago, are known from their burial mounds. They settled at places like AVEBURY and STONEHENGE, which were developed by later Bronze Age peoples into grand megalithic circles.

Late in the Bronze Age (2200-650 BC) and through the early Iron Age (650 BC-AD 43) came the Celts and other tribes who built the large earthen encampments that still crown many uplands. Their languages survive in the Welsh and Gaelic still used in western areas.

Then - following Julius Caesar's raids of 55 and 54 BC - came the Roman invasion of AD 43, and an occupation lasting over three centuries. The Romans established order, built a road network and laid out the first real towns - places such as CHESTER and CHICHESTER. As the Romans withdrew, their empire crumbling, Saxons, Danes and Vikings arrived between the 5th and 11th centuries, Saxon speech gave rise to the English language; Panes and Vikings added their elements, Many of their place names survive in recognizable form - including DERBY, previously known to Saxons as Northworthy. Finally, in 1066, came Duke William and his Normans, to conquer and then merge with the indigenous population, bringing new facets to the language- and even more new place names.

The Normans were the last conquerors or England, but it was more than 700 years before the United Kingdom came about. The Anglo-Norman conquest of Wales began in the 12th century, the last principality (Gwynedd) falling in 1282, and Wales was brought under English law by the Acts of Union of 1536 and 1542. The Kingdom of Scotland, formed in the 9th century when the Picts joined the Scots, resisted successfully. But James VI of Scotland, a great great grandson of Henry VII of England, succeeded to the English throne in 1603, and ruled both kingdoms. The Scottish parliament voted to unite with England and Wales in 1707. The first Anglo-Normans reached IRELAND in about 1170. English control gradually spread over the whole island, and the Act of Union enforced in 1801 created the United Kingdom.

The green and fertile land inherited by the Normans was not only beautiful but contained rich mineral wealth, which was barely tapped until the Industrial Revolution. Iron ore was fairly widespread, and lead, tin, copper, silver and a little gold were mined in CORNWALL, northern England and Wales. But it was coal that largely provided the power for 'the workshop of the world'.

But the 20th century brought the discovery of new energy sources - oil, natural gas and nuclear reaction. In the 1950s coal still provided 95 per cent of the nation's energy needs. By 1979 that proportion was down to 36 per cent, and oil and gas were providing 59 per cent. Gas was discovered in the North Sea in 1965, and oil four years later, and by 1984, 25 oil fields were on stream. The tax revenues generated helped compensate for the slump in manufacturing, but the oil and gas reserves are expected to begin running down in the 1990s.

The decline of manufacturing industry has been particularly hard on Britain, one of the most urbanized countries in Europe, where over three-quarters of the population live in towns and cities. Skills generated by a century and more of hard-won, years-long apprenticeships have been made worthless as demands change and computer-controlled machines turn out finished products. As in farming, but on a far larger scale, skilled workers have become redundant in many manufacturing industries - especially major ones such as textiles, engineering and shipbuilding. The only remaining 'native' mass-production car manufacturer survived on massive Government subsidies and close links with a Japanese company. Now the Japanese are building their own cars in Britain,

YOUNG AND OLD Leisure is becoming an increasing preoccupation in a country where, apart from the unemployed - whose leisure is enforced -numbers of people are accepting redundancy payments and virtual retirement, or early retirement pensions. More people of pensionable age are living to enjoy their retirement, and the number of centenarians increased from 271 in 1951 to 2410 in 1981.

There have, however, been significant changes over recent years in many of England's inner cities. Here, despite the national drop in population, there are growing numbers of teenagers and young adults - a factor in recent civil disturbances and a pattern that could persist into the 1990s. Many of the younger children have been born to parents of Pakistani or New Commonwealth (that is, excluding Canada, Australia and New Zealand) origins, of whom only 40 per cent were themselves born in Britain.

In inner LONDON alone the number of children 4 years old or less increased by 21 per cent between 1981 and 1984, and was thought to be due to a high birthrate among the capital's Asian communities. In 1984 more than half the children born in four London boroughs were to mothers from overseas -64 per cent in one borough, Brent. Outside the capital the figures for Slough were 41 percent, Leicester 36 per cent and BIRMINGHAM 30 per cent. Even in declining areas such as Accrington, Burnley and Nelson, in Lancashire, with large Asian communities, birthrates were high.

In general, the more entrepreneurial Asians have prospered, while people of African and West Indian origins have found life difficult in an era of low employment prospects, and during the 1980s their frustrations erupted in serious rioting in London, LIVERPOOL, Birmingham and Bristol.

However, rioting has become almost a way of life among a violent - and largely white -minority. Soccer hooligans have driven millions away from the grandstands and terraces of Britain's traditional winter game. Yet the British almost invented modern spectator sports. The Football Association was formed in England in 1853; lawn tennis was first played in England in 1873-4 and the first Wimbledon championships were held in 1877. Golf is generally accepted as having originated in Scotland, and rugby began at RUGBY School, in Warwickshire, in the 19th century. Squash originated at Harrow School in 1850, and the first organized track and field athletics of modern times took place in London in 1850. The origins of cricket - most English of games and the great national summer sport -are obscure, but it is probably 400 years old.

Cricket continues to draw good crowds, but rugby union is losing spectators. Tennis, golf, horse racing, motor racing and athletics remain popular, and television coverage has made darts and snooker major interests. Sports such as jogging and distance running, surfing, sailing, hang-gliding and climbing are also increasingly popular. Leisure pursuits of a less athletic nature are influenced by television watching, in which the British indulge themselves for an average 21 hours a week. Listening to the radio, records or tapes is popular, along with working on home improvements, gardening, visiting the countryside and museums, and walking the numerous public footpaths.

These paths - some of them rights of way and drovers' roads trodden since prehistoric times - are jealously guarded by numerous conservation societies and organizations such as the National Trust, which has acquired large areas of land and scores of fine historic houses and buildings for public benefit, The efforts of' the Trust have taken on a wider significance with the growth of tourism, which has become a major industry, employing more than 1.3 million persons in 1985, Fifteen million visitors came to Britain in that year.

Tourists For tourists, the radical changes which have taken place in the country, are obscured by a history so long and rich in incident and character that it has imposed itself upon almost every aspect of both landscape and townscape. Great cathedrals such as those at CANTERBURY, DURHAM, ELY and LINCOLN, raised almost 1000 years ago, divert their eyes from the present. The church music sung in them is a basic ingredient of English culture, celebrated in the Three Choirs Festival, held in turn at GLOUCESTER, WORCESTER and HEREFORD cathedrals. Other festivals of the arts have become established since the Second World War - notably the great international event held in EDINBURGH every autumn, not to mention others in YORK, HARROGATE, BATH and Cheltenham. The literary trail, too, has its powerful associations the LAKE DISTRICT with sonnets by Wordsworth; the wild, romantic EXMOOR of Lorna Doone, and Burns's Ayrshire countryside; the Brontes' Yorkshire, Thomas Hardy's DORSET and Dylan Tho mas's magical west Wales.

But for most tourists, Britain's greatest attraction is the capital itself, London; while many travel on to view the ancient university seats of Oxford and Cambridge, historic cities like York and Chester, timbered towns like Ledbury, and resorts like Brighton and BLACK-POOL. Most of all, perhaps, they travel to STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, birthplace and burial place - of William Shakespeare, whose matchless plays and poems may well have etched upon hearts and minds images of Britain loss fleeting than those cast by television.

THE UNITED KINGDOM AT A GLANCE

Area 244 119 km2 (94 255 sq miles)

Population 56 400 000

Capital London

Government Parliamentary monarchy

Currency Pound sterling 100 pence

Languages English, Gaelic, Welsh

Religions Christian (55% Protestant, 10% Roman Catholic), Muslim (2%), Jewish, Hindu and Sikh minorities

Climate Temperate; average London temperature ranges from 2-6°C (36-43°F) in January to 13-22°C (55-72°F) in July

Main primary products Wheat, Barley, potatoes, sugar beet, fruit and vegetables, fish; oil and natural gas, coal

Major Industries Agriculture, oil and gas extraction and refining, coal mining, machinery and transport equipment, iron and steel, metals, food processing, paper and paper products, textiles, chemicals, clothing, light Industry, finance and business services

Main exports Agricultural and industrial machinery, crude oil and petroleum products, chemicals, transport equipment, vehicles, aircraft, electrical goods, iron and steel, non-ferrous metals, textiles, food products

Annual Income Per Head (US$) 7550

Population growth (per thous/yr) 1

Life expectancy (yrs.) Male 71 Female 77

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