The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the United Kingdom:
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – sovereign country in Europe, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK), or Britain. [1] [2] [3] Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, it includes the island of Great Britain—a term also applied loosely to refer to the whole country—the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is made up of four countries – England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, with Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales each having their own devolved government and national parliament.
The United Kingdom is a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations
Geography of the United Kingdom
Demographics of the United Kingdom
Ethnic groups in the United Kingdom
Foreign relations of the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a member of: [1]
Transport in the United Kingdom
Architecture of the United Kingdom
Languages of the United Kingdom
Demographics of the United Kingdom
Religion in the United Kingdom
Sport in the United Kingdom The following are the major sports; local groups may well play many others.
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. 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 total area of the United Kingdom is 94,354 square miles (244,376 km2), with an estimated population of nearly 67.6 million people in 2022.
The United Kingdom has three distinctly different legal systems, each of which derives from a particular geographical area for a variety of historical reasons: English law, Scots law, Northern Ireland law, and, since 2007, calls for a fourth type, that of purely Welsh law as a result of Welsh devolution, with further calls for a Welsh justice system.
The administrative geography of the United Kingdom is complex, multi-layered and non-uniform. The United Kingdom, a sovereign state to the northwest of continental Europe, consists of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. For local government in the United Kingdom, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales each have their own system of administrative and geographic demarcation. Consequently, there is "no common stratum of administrative unit encompassing the United Kingdom".
England and Wales is one of the three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. The substantive law of the jurisdiction is English law.
Politics of England forms the major part of the wider politics of the United Kingdom, with England being more populous than all the other countries of the United Kingdom put together. As England is also by far the largest in terms of area and GDP, its relationship to the UK is somewhat different from that of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. The English capital London is also the capital of the UK, and English is the dominant language of the UK. Dicey and Morris (p26) list the separate states in the British Islands. "England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark.... is a separate country in the sense of the conflict of laws, though not one of them is a State known to public international law." But this may be varied by statute.
Home Nations is a collective term in sport, usually referring to England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. When a sport is governed by a council representing the island of Ireland, such as the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU), the term can refer to the nations of the constituent countries on the island of Great Britain and the island of Ireland as a whole.
Association football is organised on a separate basis in each of the four constituent countries that make up the United Kingdom (UK), with each having a national football association responsible for the overall management of football within their respective country. There is no United Kingdom national football team. Football has been the most popular sport in the UK since the 1860s. Rugby union, rugby league and cricket are other popular sports.
Sport popularity in the United Kingdom plays an important role in British culture and the United Kingdom has played a significant role in the organisation and spread of sporting culture globally. In the infancy of many organised sports, the Home Nations were heavily involved in setting out the formal rules of many sports and formed among the earliest separate governing bodies, national teams and domestic league competitions. After 1922, some sports formed separate bodies for Northern Ireland, though many continued to be organised on an all-Ireland basis. For this reason, in many though not all sports, most domestic and international sport is carried on a Home Nations basis, and England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland are recognised as national entities. This is in contrast to the majority of other states that participate in international sports which field a single national team to represent the entire polity.
The terminology of the British Isles comprises the words and phrases that are used to describe the geographical and political areas of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and the smaller islands which surround them. The terms are often a source of confusion, partly owing to the similarity between some of the actual words used but also because they are often used loosely. Many of the words carry geographical and political connotations which are affected by the history of the islands. The inclusion of Ireland in the geographical definition of British Isles is debated. Ordnance Survey Ireland does not use the term.
Sport in England plays a prominent role in English society. Popular teams sports in England include association football, cricket, field hockey, rugby union, rugby league, and netball. Major individual sports include badminton, athletics, tennis, boxing, golf, cycling, motorsport, and horseracing. Cricket is regarded as the national summer sport. Association football is the most popular sport, followed by cricket, tennis and rugby. A number of modern sports were codified in England during the nineteenth century, among them cricket, rugby union, rugby league, football, field hockey, bandy, squash, tennis, and badminton. The game of baseball was first described in 18th century England.
Rugby union is a popular sport in the British Isles, including England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The game was arguably invented in 1823 by William Webb Ellis, and in 1871 the English Rugby Football Union was the first national rugby football union to be founded. It is organised separately in each of these countries, and also on an all-Ireland basis.
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland and Wales. With an area of 209,331 km2 (80,823 sq mi), it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is dominated by a maritime climate with narrow temperature differences between seasons. The island of Ireland, with an area 40 per cent that of Great Britain, is to the west—these islands, along with over 1,000 smaller surrounding islands and named substantial rocks, form the British Isles archipelago.
The formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has involved personal and political union across Great Britain and the wider British Isles. The United Kingdom is the most recent of a number of sovereign states that have been established in Great Britain at different periods in history, in different combinations and under a variety of polities. Historian Norman Davies has counted sixteen different states over the past 2,000 years.
Since 1922, the United Kingdom has been made up of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The UK Prime Minister's website has used the phrase "countries within a country" to describe the United Kingdom.
British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies. British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, by descent from British nationals. When used in a historical context, "British" or "Britons" can refer to the Ancient Britons, the Celtic-speaking inhabitants of Great Britain during the Iron Age, whose descendants formed the major part of the modern Welsh people, Cornish people, Bretons and considerable proportions of English people. It also refers to citizens of the former British Empire, who settled in the country prior to 1973, and hold neither UK citizenship nor nationality.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to England:
Scotland – a current country of the United Kingdom, and is the oldest monarchy in Europe. It is currently one of four countries of the United Kingdom, having previously been an independent, sovereign country prior to the 1707 union with England.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Wales:
The following is an alphabetical list of articles related to the United Kingdom.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Northern Ireland.
Island country located off the north-western coast of mainland Europe
Countries within a country