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Chapter 1
1.The British Isles are situated in the northwest of Europe. They are cut off from the continent by the English Channel. On the north and the east the Isles face the North Sea,and on the west they face the Atlantic Ocean. The full title of the United Kingdom is The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
3.Before the early 20th century, Northern Ireland was part of Ireland as a whole. In 1920, it become part of the United Kingdom, with a separated parliament and self-government. There were originally six countries in Northern Ireland. But since 1973 it has a single-tier system of 26 administrative districts.
4.The climate in Britain is moderated by the Atlantic Gulf Stream, and is much milder than that of many places in the same latitude. The climate is generally equable, but the day to day conditions are changeable.
Chapter 2
1.The Welsh, the Scots, the Irish are the descendants of Celts who came from Europe to the British Isles centuries before the Roman invasion. It was these people whom the Germanic Anglos and Saxons conquered in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. These Germanic conquerors were conquered in turn by the Norman French, when William of Normandy landed near Hastings in 1066. It was from the union of Norman conquerors and the
Anglo-Saxons that the English people and the English language were born.
2.Cockney English is very rich in slang,especially rhyming slang. The second part of the rhyming slang is often omitted.
4.Wales is an ancient Celtic language. In 1535 Welsh was forbidden as an official language, but in 1965 it was given equality with English for all official use in Wales. Welsh literature dates back to the 6th century AD. Much early Welsh poetry is heroic or elegiac, and concerns pre -Christian heroes, and their exploits. Welsh literature had a profound influence in medieval Europe, as it is the source both of Arthurian legend and that of the Holy Grail. From 15thcentury on ward classical Welsh literature declined.
Chapter 3
1.Soon after 700 BC the Celts from upper Rhine Land of northwest Europe came to settle on the British Isles. The first wave of Celtic invaders was the Gales, whose language is still spoken in Scotland. From about 500 BC another group of Celts called Brythons came and drove the Gales to the north and west. From the Brythons came the English name for Britain. A third wave, Belgae from Northern Gaul, arrived about 100 BC and occupied the greater part of what are now known as the Home Counties.
2.The Roman occupation of Britain lasted nearly 400 years, and it was the
Roman who brought Christianity to England.
5.The Norman Conquest was in effect a French conquest and the imposition upon England of a ruling French aristocracy. In the consequence, Norman-French of the conquerors replace English as an authoritative language in England. English became lower-class language. It was not until 14th century that English again became the language of richer and cultural class. So Middle English(1150-1450) was strongly modified by an extensive infusion of French vocabulary.
Chapter 4
4.The Great Chapter was signed by King John in 1215. This feudal contract guaranteed the barons’ traditional feudal rights. It was chiefly important as an expressing of the principle of limited government; it forward the idea that the king was bound by the law of the land. The right of revolt against unjust government was spelled out in the document. This was to be a factor in the American Revolution. The Great Chapter is traditionally regarded as the basis of English liberties.
6.The Black Death struck Europe in the middle of the 14th century and reached England in the summer of 1348. The sudden and violent effect in England was the fall in the population, and consequently in the labor force. The government tried to check this by the Statue of Labourers of 1351, which made it a criminal offence for labourers to demand, or for employers to pay, more than the maximum wages fixed by the justices in
the district.
Chapter 5
5.Renaissance means rebirth. The word was first used by Italian scholars in the mid-16th century to express the rediscovery of ancient Roman and Greek culture. But modern scholars are more incline to use the term to express the great variety of changes that Europe underwent politically, economically and culturally between 1450 and 1600.
Chapter 6
3.The Long Parliament lasted for 13 years. During the Civil War, the supporters of Parliament were called Roundheads, while the supporters of the King were called Cavaliers.
5.The Habeas Corpus Act has been called one of the four pillars of the British Constitution. The other three includes Magna Carta the Petition of Right of 1628, and the Bill of Rights of 1689.
6.In June 1688, both Whigs and Tories invited William and Mary to become the joint rulers of England. This is the famous bloodless or so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688. Since then every English Monarch rules the country by permission of Parliament.
Chapter 7
1.The first Prime Minister in English history was Sir Robert Walpole. 3.The Industrial Revolution in Britain started in the second half of the 18th century, and first began in the textile industry.
6.Laissez faire doctrine means that the government should not interfere economic affaires of private enterprise, and that government should be merely an omnipresent policeman protecting property and compelling the performance of contracts. It soon came to include such ideas as the Sanctity of private property and rights of freedom of contract and free competition; thus, it became the opposite of mercantilism.
Chapter 8
1.The Corn Laws were originally planned to protect English home-grown corn from competition from imported foreign corn, their existence made for higher food prices, and assumed the superior importance of agricultural interests over urban industrial interests. 2.Under the Prime Minister Disraeli, the second Reform Bill was passed in 1867. It actually granted nearly universal manhood suffrage in cities. But millions of rural workers still remained voteless.
Chapter 12
1.The United Kingdom has a two-party system. The present two major parties are the Conservative and the Labour parties.
2.In 1916 the Liberal Party split into two halves, and soon lost its place to the Labour Party.
名词解释 Chapter 2