Literature, music, theatre, film and art

William Shakespeare, the nation's playwright

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. He is widely regarded as the greatest playwright in the English language and one of the finest writers Britain has produced. He worked as both a playwright and an actor, and he wrote plays, sonnets and narrative poems.

His plays fall into three main groups: tragedies, comedies and histories. His best-known tragedies include Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet. He also wrote comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night, and history plays including Henry V and Richard III.

Shakespeare's company performed at the Globe Theatre on the south bank of the River Thames in London, a large open-air playhouse where audiences from every level of society could watch a performance. A modern reconstruction of the Globe, called Shakespeare's Globe, stands near the original site and opened in 1997. Shakespeare died in 1616, and his plays remain widely performed and studied today, both on stage and in film.

Important British novelists

Jane Austen (1775 to 1817) was an English novelist. Her books include Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, and her novels focus on marriage and family relationships. Many of her stories have been adapted for television and film.

Charles Dickens (1812 to 1870) wrote a number of celebrated novels, including Oliver Twist and Great Expectations. His characters have entered everyday English speech, so that someone mean might be called a Scrooge, while an eternally hopeful person might be described as a Mr Micawber.

Other notable novelists include Thomas Hardy, whose best-known novels are set in rural society and include Far from the Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure, and Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, books still enjoyed by adults and children today. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a Scottish doctor and writer, created the detective Sherlock Holmes. Evelyn Waugh wrote satirical novels, including Brideshead Revisited, Decline and Fall and Scoop.

Important British poets

British poetry stretches back many centuries and forms a central part of the country's literary tradition. Geoffrey Chaucer, writing in the fourteenth century, is often called the father of English poetry for The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories told in verse by pilgrims travelling to Canterbury.

Later poets built on this tradition in very different styles. Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet, wrote in both Scots and English during the eighteenth century and is celebrated every year on Burns Night. The Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century, including William Wordsworth and William Blake, wrote about nature, imagination and the individual. Wilfred Owen, one of the First World War poets, wrote powerfully about the experience of trench warfare before his death in 1918.

Britain's great playwrights

William Shakespeare, born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, is widely regarded as the greatest playwright in the English language and one of the most important in the world. He wrote comedies, tragedies and histories, including Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and he also wrote many sonnets. His plays were performed at the Globe Theatre in London and remain part of the standard repertoire in British theatre today, studied in schools and performed on stages worldwide.

Other British playwrights are also significant. Christopher Marlowe, a contemporary of Shakespeare, wrote tragedies such as Doctor Faustus. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, playwrights including Oscar Wilde, known for witty social comedies such as The Importance of Being Earnest, and George Bernard Shaw, an Irish-born playwright who wrote Pygmalion, made lasting contributions to British theatre. Twentieth-century dramatists such as Alan Ayckbourn and Harold Pinter continued this tradition of serious and comic drama.

Landmark works of British literature

British writers have produced some of the most widely read works in world literature. Jane Austen wrote novels of manners in the early 19th century, including Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, noted for their sharp observation of English society. The Brontë sisters, Charlotte and Emily, wrote Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights respectively, both landmark novels of the Victorian period.

Charles Dickens, one of the best-known Victorian novelists, wrote novels such as Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol, often highlighting poverty and social injustice in 19th-century England. Other major works include Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, an early English novel, and Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, a satirical work. In the 20th century, notable works include Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm by George Orwell, and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Children's literature is also strongly represented, with works such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, the Winnie-the-Pooh stories by A.A. Milne, and the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, which has been translated into many languages and adapted into a highly successful series of films.

Characters who became household names

Several British literary characters are recognised well beyond the pages of the books in which they first appeared. Sherlock Holmes, the detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, first appeared in 1887 and is famous for his powers of deduction and his companion Dr Watson. His stories set the pattern for much detective fiction that followed.

James Bond, the fictional secret agent created by Ian Fleming, first appeared in the 1953 novel Casino Royale. Bond, known by his code number 007, has since become one of the most recognisable characters in British popular culture through both the novels and the long-running series of films.

Other enduring characters include Mr Darcy, the reserved romantic hero of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and Winnie-the-Pooh, the gentle bear created by A.A. Milne, who remains a much-loved figure in children's literature. These characters, alongside figures such as Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, illustrate the lasting reach of British storytelling into everyday culture, language and international entertainment.

Britain's classical music tradition

Britain has produced classical music of international standing for several centuries, and the Life in the UK test focuses on a handful of composers whose works remain widely performed today. Classical music in this context means orchestral, choral and instrumental music written for concert performance, as distinct from popular or folk traditions.

The best-known examples set for study concern George Frideric Handel, whose oratorio Messiah is still sung regularly, often at Easter, and whose works remain central to British concert life.

Handel, Elgar and Holst

George Frideric Handel was born in Germany but spent most of his working life in Britain and became a British citizen in 1727. He wrote the Water Music for King George I and the Music for the Royal Fireworks for George II, and both pieces remain popular concert works today. His oratorio Messiah, one of the most performed choral works in the world, is sung regularly by choirs, often at Easter time.

Sir Edward Elgar was born in Worcester in 1857 and is regarded as one of England's most important composers. His best-known works include the Enigma Variations and the Pomp and Circumstance Marches; March No. 1, known as Land of Hope and Glory, is traditionally played at the Last Night of the Proms.

Gustav Holst, born in 1874, is best known for The Planets, an orchestral suite with a movement devoted to each planet of the solar system. He adapted the tune from the Jupiter movement to fit the hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country, which remains popular in British churches. Other notable British composers from the same broad period include Henry Purcell, Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton and Benjamin Britten.

The Proms

The Proms, formally the BBC Promenade Concerts, are an annual eight-week season of orchestral classical music held mainly at the Royal Albert Hall in London every summer. The festival began in 1895, founded by the conductor Sir Henry Wood together with the impresario Robert Newman, with the aim of making orchestral music affordable and accessible to a wide audience rather than only the wealthy. Since 1927 the BBC has organised and broadcast the concerts, and every performance is broadcast on radio, with a number also shown on television.

Standing tickets, known as promming, are sold cheaply on the day at the hall, keeping the tradition of low-cost access to live orchestral music alive. The season closes with the Last Night of the Proms, a celebratory concert traditionally featuring patriotic pieces including Elgar's Land of Hope and Glory, with the audience singing along and waving flags.