The Siege of Malakand was the 26 July – 2 August 1897 siege of the British garrison in the Malakand region of modern day Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. The British faced a force of Pashtun tribesmen whose tribal lands had been dissected by the Durand Line, the 1,519 mile (2,445 km) border between Afghanistan and Pakistan drawn up at the end of the Anglo-Afghan wars to help hold the Russian Empire's spread of influence towards British India. The unrest caused by this division of the Pashtun lands led to the rise of Saidullah, a Pashtun Fakir who led an army of at least 10,000 against the British garrison in Malakand. Although the British forces were divided amongst a number of poorly defended positions, the small garrison at the camp of Malakand South and the small fort at Chakdara were both able to hold out for six days against the much larger Pashtun army. The siege was lifted when a relief column dispatched from British positions to the south was sent to assist General William Hope Meiklejohn, commander of the British forces at Malakand South. Accompanying this relief force was second lieutenant Winston S. Churchill, who later published his account as The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War. (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...)
Image 5Mo Farah is the most successful British track athlete in modern Olympic Games history, winning the 5000 m and 10,000 m events at two Olympic Games. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 6The Beatles are the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed band in popular music, with estimated sales of over one billion.
Image 7King Alfred the Great statue in Winchester, Hampshire. The 9th-century English king encouraged education in his kingdom, and proposed that primary education be taught in English, with those wishing to advance to holy orders to continue their studies in Latin. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 9The Christmas Pantomime 1890. Pantomime plays a prominent role in British culture during the Christmas and New Year season. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 24Emmeline Pankhurst. Named one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century by Time, Pankhurst was a leading figure in the suffragette movement. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 26The Oxford Union debate chamber. Called the "world's most prestigious debating society", the Oxford Union has hosted leaders and celebrities. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 28Music hall evolved into variety shows. First performed in 1912, the Royal Variety Performance was first held at the London Palladium (pictured) in 1941. Performed in front of members of the Royal Family, it is held annually in December and broadcast on television. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 44Cricketer W. G. Grace, with his long beard and MCC cap, was the most famous British sportsman in the Victorian era. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 52King Edward's Chair in Westminster Abbey. A 13th-century wooden throne on which the British monarch sits when he or she is crowned at the coronation, swearing to uphold the law and the church. The monarchy is apolitical and impartial, with a largely symbolic role as head of state. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 60William III and Mary II Presenting the Cap of Liberty to Europe, 1716, Sir James Thornhill. Enthroned in heaven with the Virtues behind them are the royals William and Mary who had taken the throne after the Glorious Revolution and signed the English Bill of Rights of 1689. William tramples on arbitrary power and hands the red cap of liberty to Europe where, unlike Britain, absolute monarchy stayed the normal form of power execution. Below William is the French king Louis XIV. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
Image 65The Notting Hill Carnival is Britain's biggest street festival. Led by members of the British African-Caribbean community, the annual carnival takes place in August and lasts three days. (from Culture of the United Kingdom)
A view of the Second Severn Crossing, as seen from Severn Beach, England. This bridge carries the M4 motorway across the River Severn between Severn Beach and Caldicot in south Wales. It has a total span of 5.1 km and includes a cable-stayed section called the Shoots Bridge which spans the shipping channel between the two towers. The River Severn has a vast tidal range—the point from which this photograph was taken is covered at high tide.
Arlington Row, a row of Cotswold stone cottages in Bibury, Gloucestershire, England. Built in 1380 as a monastic wool store, the buildings were converted into weavers' cottages in the 17th century. William Morris declared the village to be the most beautiful in England.
A diagram of movement within a roundabout in a country where traffic drives on the left.
A roundabout is a type of road junction, or traffic calming device, at which traffic streams circularly around a central island after first yielding to the circulating traffic. Unlike with traffic circles, vehicles on a roundabout have priority over the entering vehicle, parking is not allowed and pedestrians are usually prohibited from the central island.
Kew Gardens is a botanic garden in southwest London. Founded in 1840, its living collections include some 27,000 taxa while the herbarium houses over 8.5 million preserved plant and fungal specimens. This photograph shows the Davies Alpine House, which opened in 2006. The design of the greenhouse encourages natural airflow, the automatically operated blinds prevent overheating, and the glass is of a special type that allows maximum transmission of ultraviolet light. The structure houses a collection of alpine plants that grow above the tree line in their localities of origin.
Beer Street and Gin Lane are a pair of 1751 engravings by William Hogarth in support of the then-proposed Gin Act 1751. This Act of Parliament made the distillation of gin illegal in England. Beer Street shows a happy city drinking the "good" beverage of English beer, whereas Gin Lane claims to show what would happen if people started drinking gin, a harder liquor. People are shown as healthy, happy and hardworking in Beer Street, while in Gin Lane they are scrawny, lazy and acting carelessly, including a drunk mother accidentally sending her baby tumbling to its doom.
A stitched image of the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, England, as seen from the tower of the Church of St Mary the Virgin. The building, often abbreviated as 'Rad Cam', was built by James Gibbs in 1737–1749 to house the Radcliffe Science Library. After the Radcliffe Science Library moved into another building, the Radcliffe Camera became a reading room of the Bodleian Library.