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Flag of the United Kingdom
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, making up a total area of 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 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, whose wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 14.9 million. The cities of Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast are the national capitals of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, respectively.

The lands of the UK have 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, the domination of Scotland, 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. 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. 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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Holkham Hall
Holkham Hall

Holkham Hall, Norfolk, England, is an 18th-century country house built in the Palladian style for Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester by the collaborating architects William Kent and Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington. It is one of England's finest examples of the Palladian revival style of architecture, the severity of the design being closer to Palladio's ideals than many of the other numerous Palladian style houses of the period. The Holkham estate, formerly known as Neals, had been purchased by Sir Edward Coke, the founder of the family fortune, in 1609. It remains today the ancestral home of the Coke family, the Earls of Leicester of Holkham. (Full article...)

Cosmo Gordon Lang (1864–1945) was an Anglican prelate who served as Archbishop of York and Archbishop of Canterbury. As Archbishop of Canterbury during the abdication crisis of 1936 he took a strong moral stance, and comments he made in a subsequent broadcast were widely condemned as uncharitable towards the departed king. In his early ministry Lang served in slum parishes in Leeds and Portsmouth before his appointment in 1901 as suffragan Bishop of Stepney in London. In 1908 Lang was nominated Archbishop of York, despite his relatively junior status as a suffragan rather than a diocesan bishop. He entered the House of Lords as a Lord Spiritual and caused consternation in traditionalist circles by speaking and voting against the Lords' proposal to reject David Lloyd George's 1909 "People's Budget". This apparent radicalism was not, however, maintained in later years. At the start of World War I, Lang was heavily criticised for a speech in which he spoke sympathetically of the Kaiser. After the war he supported controversial proposals for the revision of the Book of Common Prayer, but after acceding to Canterbury he took no practical steps to resolve this issue. As Archbishop of Canterbury he presided over the 1930 Lambeth Conference, which gave limited church approval to the use of contraception. (Full article...)

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Wikinews UK

2 November 2024 – 2024 Conservative Party leadership election
Kemi Badenoch is elected leader of the United Kingdom's Conservative Party, following the resignation of Rishi Sunak. (The Guardian)
28 October 2024 – 2024 United Kingdom riots
British anti-Islam far-right activist Tommy Robinson is sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment for contempt of court and repeating false allegations about a Syrian refugee. (Reuters)
24 October 2024 – Regulation of electronic cigarettes, Smoking bans in the United Kingdom
The British government announces that single-use vapes will be banned in England and Wales beginning on 1 June 2025. (BBC News)
22 October 2024 – 2024 United States presidential election
The presidential campaign of former U.S. President Donald Trump files a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission against the United Kingdom's Labour Party, accusing the Labour Party of "blatant foreign interference" in the election to support the Kamala Harris presidential campaign. (BBC News)

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