British art has long been dominated by influences from abroad, first from continental Europe and most recently from America. After the Reformation brought the medieval tradition of religious art to an end, a string of secular foreign portraitists, including Hans Holbein the Younger and Sir Anthony Van Dyck, dominated the courtsponsored art scene of the 16th and 17th centuries. Even the works of the acclaimed British-born artists of the time, Elizabethan court painter Nicholas Hilllard (1547-1619) and Baroque decorative artist Sir James Thornhill (1675-1734; see his Painted Hall in Greenwich) exhibit continental influences. The Civil War freed British artists from the constraints of the court, making way for William Hogarth 11697-1764) and his narrative engravings of distinctly British "modem moral subin A Rake's Progress. Portraiture continued to flourish under the brush of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), the founder of the Royal Academy of Art, whose work incorporated elements of historical painting. The long, feathery strokes of its contemporary Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88) produced portraits with prominent settings and, later, Britain's first classical landscapes.
Landscape art reached its pinnacle in the 19th century, when J.M.W. Tumor (17751851) and John Constable (1776-1837) glorified the English countryside with their magnificent, light-filled oil paintings. Reacting to the popularity of genre painter David Wilkie's (1785-1841) drably-depicted and trivial subject matter, the three young artists William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82), and Sir John Everett Millais (1829-96) founded the Italian-inspired Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848.
Hunt's The Hireling Shepard and Millais' Ophelia illuminated their respective moral and romantic subjects with clear, bright colors by painting
over a pure white ground. The Pre-Raphaelites in turn inspired William Morris
to turn from the lackluster machine-made design of his age and redis-
cover England's rustic roots in the Arts and Crafts Movement. The art of illustration also flourished in this period, typified by the output of Punch cartoonist John
Leech (1817-64), the illuminated manuscripts of mystic artist and lyric poet William
Blake, the bizarre and grotesque imagery of Aubrey Beardsley (1872-
1898), and the satirical musings of Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914), who furnished the
whimsical illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventure in Wonderland.
The 20th century began with the basically pre-Modern paintings of Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1959). Modernism reached Britain with the sculpture of Henry Moore 1898-1986), who’s reclining and often abstract nudes express themes of life and fertility. His contemporary Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) used pure abstract forms to explore space and texture in her sculpture. The disturbing, meat-filled portraits of Frances Bacon (1909-1992) and the emotionally intense realism of Lucian Freud (b. 1922), Sigmund's grandson, have transformed British portraiture, while Pop artist David Hockney (b. 1937) infused an American-born movement with British wit. More recently, the multimedia artist Damien Hirst (b. 1965) has both fascinated and appalled audiences worldwide with such installations as a shark vended in a formaldehyde solution. Active conservative art patron Prince
Charles provides much fodder for postage stamps and continues the English traditional of landscape painting with his bland watercolors.
ARCHITECTURE
The many cathedrals and castles dotting Britain's architectural landscape trace early history of foreign conquests and cultural invasions. Pre-Christian builders of the Bronze Age left their mark at Stonehenge (p. 196), while remnants of the Roman spa at Bath (p. 202) testify to the engineering savvy of England's ancient , emperors. Anglo-Saxon architects tried their own hand at building in the 6th century, and St. Martin's (p. 152) in Canterbury has the small windows and rectangular body typical of Saxon construction. When the Normans arrived, they built cruci
form churches (shaped like a cross) with thick walls and rounded arches, such as Durham Cathedral . Beginning with the White Tower at the Tower of London . they also introduced the squat, square towers of England's first stone castles, which both fortified the coastline and became the symbol of feudal life
.
Gothic architecture may have originated in France, but beginning around 1175 the English took the style to new heights in three distinct and increasingly elegant In addition to the pointed arches and ribbed stone vaults common to all buildings, the 13th-century Wells Cathedral also has lancet windows that exemplify the Early English stage. Decorated period buildings like the 1334 Salisbury Cathedral show off intricately carved windows, and the 80-foot high King's College Chapel in Cambridge , completed in 1547, demonstrates the Perpendicular style's long windows and strong vertical lines. The late medieval years also saw the declining importance of castles as military strategy began to favor explosive battles over long sieges, but Harlech Castle has the concentric layout and rounded towers that signaled sophistication in 1290. Half-timber cottages housed the lower classes and were made from wood frames filled with plaster to overcome the scarcity of strong timber.
The age of the architect dawned with Inigo Jones (1573-1652), whose admiration of Italian design can be seen in the symmetry and pillars of his Queen's House in Greenwich and the classical Covent Garden piazza in London. When the Great Fire of London destroyed most of the city in 1666, Sir Christopher Wren rebuilt 53 churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral . A wave of random revivals and exotic influences swept through Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries, leaving in its wake the Gothic Houses of Parliament , an Egyptian-flavored Marshall's Woollen Mill in Leeds (the obelisks are really chiumeys), and the British Museum , a Greek revivalist's dream. John Nash (1752-1835) worked both classy, in his Regency buildings with stucco fronts, and gaudy, at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, which mixes Hindu and Oriental elements in a carnivalesque mess. The second destruction of London during the air raids of World War 11 allowed architects to replace the city's industrial docklands with the skyscraper Canary Wharf , and the modernism continued in 1986 with Richard Rodger's metallic Lloyd's Building Greenwich's Millennium Dome opened for the year 2000, and while the exhibition within will end in December 2000, the futuristic exterior will remain.
Britain was long called "a land without music," a tag not entirely deserved. Starting from the monastic chants of the 900s, the past millenium of British classical music has witnessed brilliant composition amongst the dry spells. During the English Renaissance, all published music, by royal decree, came from the printing presses of anthem writer Thomas Tallis (1550-1640), "Father of English Cathedral music," and his partner William Byrd (1543-1623), who gave the Italians a run for their money by developing motets and psalms in Latin and English. During the same creative period, Thomas Morley (1557-1602) created the quintessentially British madrigal, and the melodies for solo voice and lute in John Dowland's (1563-1626) collection of airs were as light as, well, air. Thomas Weelkes (1575-1623) and John Wilbye (1574-1638) continued these motet and madrigal traditions into the 16th and 17th centuries, and later Henry Purcell (1659-1695) composed instrumental music as well as England's first great opera, Dido and Aeneas.
The 18th century, regarded as Britain's musical Dark Age, welcomed the visits of the foreign geniuses Mozart, Haydn, and George Frederic Handel, who enjoyed Britam enough to become a naturalized subject in his later years. British composer William Boyce (1710-79) contributed to his country's musical heritage with a 3-volume collection of early English cathedral music. Sir William Sterndale Bennett (1816-75) wrote sprightly piano compositions bearing the influence of his friend Mendelssohn, but today's audiences are more familiar with the operettas of W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911) and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900); the pair were rumored to hate each other, but they managed to produce gems filled with social satire and farce, such as 7We Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance. A second renaissance of more serious music began under Edward Elgar (1857-1934), whose pomp is outweighed by circumstances of eloquence in his Enigma Variations. Gustav Hoist (1874-1934), in contrast to his suites for military band, adapted Neoclassical methods and folk materials to Romantic moods in The Ptanets.
Also borrowing elements from folk music's simple melodies, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) and John Ireland (1879-1962) brought musical modernism to the island, while composer William Walton's (1902-83) world conducting tours erased the "not for export" stamp so long attached to British music. The world wars provided adequate fodder for this continued musical resurgence, provoking Benjamin Britten's (1913-76) heartbreaking War Requiem and Michael Tip
pett's (1905-98) spiritually humanitarian oratorio, A Child of Our Time. Present stalwarts Peter Maxwell Davies (b. 1934), whose symphonies evoke Medieval and Renaissance themes, and Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934), are also valued for sponsoring performances of contemporary compositions. Richard Rodney Bennett (b. 1936) has experimented with 12-tone methods of writing, while Jonathan Harvey (b. 1939) added electronics to the mix in his choral/instrumental works. On the British stage, Oliver Knussen (b. 1952) set Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are to music in his one-act opera, and Andrew Lloyd Webber (b. 1948) has transformed musical theater with his blend of opera, popular music, and falling chandeliers. Youngsters Brian Ferneyhough (b. 1943), Anthony Powers (b. 1953), and Philip Grange (b. 1956) also stand poised to carry Britain's classical music into the 21st century.
POPULAR
THE BRITISH ARE COMING
Maybe the smaller size of the music market makes it easier to break into. Maybe it's just something in the water. Whatever it is, Britain has continually been the source of much innovation in popular music in its various incarnations. After World War 11, imported American rock and blues provided musical inspiration for the first wave of "British Invasion" rock groups. From Liverpool (see p. 328) and then London, The Beatles stood at the fore of every musical and cultural trend, spinning out the classic songs that became part of the international cultural vocabulary. Their Satanic Majesties The Rolling Stones were London's harder-edged answer to the Fab Four, while The Kinks spurned psychedelia and voiced horror at the American vulgarity that seemed, to them, to have crushed Little England. The Who began as Kinks-like popsters, then expanded into "rock operas" like Quadrophenia, which chronicled the fights between "rockers" (who liked leather jackets and America) and "mods" (who liked speed, androgyny, and the Who).
Psychedelic drugs and high hopes produced a flurry of great tunes by white British adapters of the blues. The Yardbirds spawned guitar heroes Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, who went on to dominate mass markets in the 70s through their bands Cream and Led Zeppelin, respectively. The same period also saw the release of long self-indulgent concept albums by "progressive-rock" groups such as Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, and Roxy Music.
ANARCHY IN THE UK
The theatrical excess of Queen and Elton John characterized mid-70s rock. While David Bowie flitted through personae, "pub rock" groups tried to return rock to the people, leading to the punk movement. In London, Malcolm McLaren organized the Sex Pistols to get publicity for his King's Road boutique, "Sex." With "Sex's" clothes and Johnny Rotten's snarl, the Pistols indelibly marked music and culture. The Clash made political punk with an idealistic leftist slant, while the sloppy sounds of The Damned degenerated into goth posturings, Perhaps the most popular of punk's first-wave bands among the British was The Jam, led Paul Weller's resolutely British lyrics. The fans who sent it up the charts w surprised to learn that The Buzzcocks' Pete Shelley wrote "Ever Fallen in Love? about a man.
Inspired by punk's DIY ethos, but adding synthesizers, Joy Division and Factory Records made Manchester echo with gloomily poetic rock, and The Cure shook teens everywhere. Elvis Costello and Squeeze found that punk had cleared the ground for smart pop, which stayed bitingly British even as it took over world charts. From the same anti-establishment impulses as punk came the metal of Ozzy Osbourne and Iron Maiden, which was much less acclaimed but still attracted a cult following. Sheffield's Def Leppard took the hard-rock-big-hair ethic through the 80s.
Synth-Pop, Indie and Dance
Alas, punk died art angry death with Sid Vicious, leaving the music scene increas-
ingly receptive to the burgeoning field of electronic music. Prompted by the key-
board swagger of Germans Kraftwerk, a swarm of bubbly New Romantics such
as The Human League and Spandau Ballet took to the English stage in the 80s With
their synthesisers. Duran Duran and Eurythmics may have more successfully
crossed the Atlantic to dominate American charts, but Depeche Mode, Erasure,
and the ever-witty Pet Shop Boys refined the synth-pop message and kept the
home crowds dancing through the night. The producing machine of Stock,
Aitken, and Waterman churned out a string of embarrassingly catchy hits by Rick
Astley and Bananarama among others, while Wham! managed to be equally embar-
rassing on their own.
Manchester took on the role of center of musical development throughout the
80s. The melancholy musings of the Morrissey-led Smiths were matched by the
bittersweet beats of New Order (formerly Joy Division). Another Mancunian, Mark
E. Smith, founded influential cult band The Fall. In the late 80s, a crop of guitar
noise bands from the city helped to create the early rave movement. Mop-topped,
sweaty youths dropped Ecstasy and danced maniacally to the "Madchester"
sounds of The Stone Roses, The Happy Mondays, and The Charlatans. This evolved in
the mid-90s into the sounds of a diverse range of indie bands tenuously held
together under the "Britpop" label, including the Beatles-esque Oasis, the glarn
Suede, the wry Blur, and the campy Pulp.
The pop charts have also been subject to the musical stylings of the Spice Girls
and equally spicy boy-bands like Take That, now defunct but survived by the
extremely successful Robbie Williams. The music of other cultures, including the
sitar-tinged Indian sounds of Comershop, continues to influence the direction of
British pop, keeping it fresh. Shoppers should note that genre-classifications in
music stores may be different from what they're used to. "Swing" refers not to
big band music but to the R&B sounds of singers such as All Saints; "ska",
meanwhile, refers to the original Jamaican musical form, not the American ska-
punk hybrid.
The UK has also taken dance music to heart, with record stores having to create
separate sections for the genres of dance music-house, techno, trance, drum 'n'
bass, and others too numerous to include-that rule much of the club scene. The
rave scene (and the synthetic drugs that accompanied it) exploded in Britain in the
late 80s, and DJs like Carl Cox and Tony de Vit became stars in their own right. While
"trip-hop"-the name given to the downtempo Bristol sound of Massive Attack,
Tricky, and Portishead-provided something to chill to, the Big Beat dance-rock
sound of The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim continues to draw the punters into
the clubs. In the house music of Basement Jaxx and the drum 'n' bass of Ron! Size
and Reprazent, Britain in the new millennium continues to stake its long-standing
claim to musical innovation.
Food and Tea
British cuisine's deservedly modest reputation redeems itself in the few specialties without which the world's palate would be sadly incomplete. Chances are you may well leave the island addicted to rice pudding, Yorkshire pudding, bread pudding, shortbread, the inestimable Hobnob, and of course, spotted dick.
Britons like to start their day off heartily with the famous English breakfast, served in most B&Bs across the country. Meat is the main staple of any British meal, and this cholesterol-filled repast, consisting of fried eggs, fried ham, fried bacon, fried sausage, fried bread, marmalade, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms, and (in winter) porridge, is no exception. You will probably want a "nice cuppa (tea) to wash it all down; unlike its French and Italian counterparts, British coffee is far from exceptional. The best native dishes for lunch or dinner are roasts-beef, lamb, and Wiltshire barns. Bangers and mash uses up left-over sausages and potatoes, while bubble and squeak does the same for cabbage and potato. Vegetables, often boiled into a flavorless, textureless mass, are generally the weakest part of the meal. Beware the British salad-it often consists of a few limp lettuce leaves mixed with an abundance of sweetened mayonnaise called "salad cream."
The British like their desserts exceedingly sweet and gloopy. Fools, sponges, trifles, and puddings in various varieties will satiate even the most severe of sweet teeth. Fruit trifle is a misnomer consisting of wondrous combination of all the best things in life-cake, custard, jam, whipped cream, fresh fruit, and sherry. Treacle tart and spotted dick-a sponge cake with raisins-are a feast unto themselves. For a more delicate end to the meal, fools (whipped cream blended with fruit) and light cakes called sponges are delicious. Most desserts are served with large dollops of thick, yellow custard or whipped cream.
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