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Portal:United Kingdom

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Flag of the United Kingdom
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Coat of Arms for the United Kingdom
Map of the United Kingdom in the British Isles.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The UK includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and most of the smaller islands within the British Isles, covering 94,354 square miles (244,376 km2). Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, and the Irish Sea. The UK maintains sovereignty over the British Overseas Territories, which are located across the Atlantic, Pacific and other oceans. The United Kingdom had an estimated population of over 68.2 million people in 2023. The capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom is London. The cities of Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast are the national capitals of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, respectively.

The UK has been inhabited continuously since the Neolithic. In AD 43, the Roman conquest of Britain began; the Roman departure was followed by Anglo-Saxon settlement. In 1066, the Normans conquered England. With the end of the Wars of the Roses, the English state stabilised and began to grow in power, resulting by the 16th century in the annexation of Wales, and the establishment of the British Empire. Over the course of the 17th century, the role of the British monarchy was reduced, particularly as a result of the English Civil War. In 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland united under the Treaty of Union to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In the Georgian era, the office of prime minister became established. The Acts of Union 1800 incorporated the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Most of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922 as the Irish Free State, and the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 created the present United Kingdom.

The UK became the first industrialised country and was the world's foremost power for the majority of the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly during the Pax Britannica between 1815 and 1914. The British Empire was the leading economic power for most of the 19th century, a position supported by its agricultural prosperity, its role as a dominant trading nation, a massive industrial capacity, significant technological achievements, and the rise of 19th-century London as the world's principal financial centre. At its height in the 1920s, the British Empire encompassed almost a quarter of the world's landmass and population, and was the largest empire in history. However, its involvement in the First World War and the Second World War damaged Britain's economic power and a global wave of decolonisation led to the independence of most British colonies. (Full article...)

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"Hey Jude" is a song attributed to Paul McCartney and John Lennon (though largely the work of McCartney), originally recorded by The Beatles for the self-titled The Beatles album, but released instead as a single. The song, despite its unusually long length (seven minutes, 12 seconds), became the Beatles' best-selling single, although they did produce a trimmed down version for American radio due to most stations' refusal to air a song of such length. The song–originally titled "Hey Jules"–was written for John Lennon's son Julian by McCartney, at a trying time for the Lennon family when John and his first wife, Cynthia, were getting divorced. The senior Lennon related to the song extremely well too, as he had just begun his relationship with his future second wife, Yoko Ono. McCartney had also just broken up with Jane Asher and was about to start seeing Linda Eastman. (Full article...)

Triptych, May–June 1973 is a triptych completed in 1973 by the Irish-born artist Francis Bacon. The oil-on-canvas work was painted in memory of Bacon's lover George Dyer, who committed suicide on the eve of the artist's retrospective at Paris's Grand Palais in October 1971. The triptych is a portrait of the moments before Dyer's death. Bacon was preoccupied by Dyer's suicide in his last twenty years, during which time he painted a number of similarly themed works. He admitted to friends that he never fully recovered from the event, and described painting the triptych as an exorcism of his feelings of loss and guilt. The work is stylistically more static and monumental than Bacon's earlier triptychs. It has been described as one of his "supreme achievements", and is generally viewed as his most intense and tragic canvas. Of the three "Black Triptychs" that Bacon created to confront Dyer's death, Triptych, May–June 1973 is generally regarded as the most accomplished. In 2006, The Daily Telegraph's art critic Sarah Crompton wrote that "emotion seeps into each panel of this giant canvas…the sheer power and control of Bacon's brushwork take the breath away". In 1989, the work sold at Sotheby's for US$6,270,000, the highest price then paid for a Bacon work. (Full article...)

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Wikinews UK

13 March 2025 –
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announces that NHS England will be abolished in a drive to reduce bureaucracy and bring National Health Service management back under "democratic control". The move is expected to result in around 6,500 job losses. (BBC News)
2 March 2025 – Peace negotiations in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
United Kingdom prime minister Keir Starmer announces after a meeting of European Union leaders in London that a "coalition of the willing" is working on a Ukraine peace plan that they will present to U.S. president Donald Trump. (Sky News)
1 March 2025 – United Kingdom–Ukraine relations
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with UK prime minister Keir Starmer in London, where they sign off on a British loan of GB£2.26 billion to buy military supplies for Ukraine. (BBC)
27 February 2025 – United Kingdom–United States relations
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Washington, D.C., for talks that include the Russo-Ukrainian War peace negotiations. Starmer also presents a letter from King Charles III inviting Trump to visit London later this year. (NPR)
25 February 2025 – 2020s European re-armament
The United Kingdom announces an increase in military spending to 2.5% of its GDP by 2027, and 3% by 2034 at the latest. The move comes just before UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday in Washington, D.C. (The New York Times)
25 February 2025 – Rwanda–United Kingdom relations, Democratic Republic of the Congo–Rwanda conflict
The UK government suspends financial aid and imposes economic sanctions on several high-ranking Rwandan officials over the country's military support for M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (Reuters)

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