There are many beautiful lakes and mountains in Scotland and England. The highest point in the Highlands is Ben Nevis (1 340 metres). The longest river flows in England, it is the Severn. The main attraction in the north of England is the Lake District. Thanks to the warm waters of Gulf Stream the island is very green and the British climate is mild. Local summers are rather hot and winters are not cold. As the weather is very changeable in Britain, it is the favourite topic for discussion with the British.

The capital of Great Britain is London. It stands on the Thames river. The country is a constitutional monarchy and officially the Queen is the Head of state. But it is ruled by the Prime Minister and the government. The legislative body is the Parliament which consists of the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

The UK is a highly developed industrial state. The chief industries are shipbuilding, fishing and mining, production of aircraft equipment, electronics, textile and chemicals. The country is the world’s largest exporter of iron and steel goods. The most important industrial cities of Great Britain are London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, Edinburgh.

A lot of famous people were born and lived in Great Britain. Among them are Shakespeare, Newton, Churchill, Paul McCartney, Joanne Rowling, Sting, David Beckham and many others.

The contemporary UK constitutional monarch, at present King Charles III, possesses the ultimate legal responsibility for a variety of functions that are crucial to the operation of the political system. Among them are:

• Appointing and removing the Prime Minister and other ministers;

• Dissolving Parliament, to bring about general elections;

• ‘Proroguing’ Parliament – that is, disbanding it for a set period of time;

• Approving the most important laws (primary legislation) – through granting what is known as ‘Royal Assent’;

• Appointing members of the House of Lords;

• The conduct of diplomacy, and agreeing treaties;

• Acting as head of the Armed Forces, being responsible for their deployment within and outside the UK, including in potential or actual hostile action;

• Being head of the Church of England, the official religion of England; and

• Granting honours.

When Elizabeth II traveled the globe, although she did not make political pronouncements, her official presence at events had the force of diplomatic statements. She participated in approximately 300 public events each year. She held weekly meetings with prime ministers, fifteen during the course of her reign, beginning with Winston Churchill and ending with Liz Truss just two days before her death.

There were some light-hearted events, too, like the queen’s tea with Paddington Bear. And she opened the 2012 Olympics with an elaborate video showing her being whisked away to a helicopter by Daniel Craig, portraying James Bond, where a stunt double dressed like Elizabeth parachuted into the opening ceremonies.

Queen Elizabeth II did not cut back on her appearances and duties until her final year, and then only on medical advice. For her Silver Jubilee in 1977, she reflected on her early promise of service: "Although that vow was made in my salad days, when I was green in judgment, I do not regret nor retract one word of it.”

Viscount Althorp was Equerry to George VI from 1950 to 1952, and to The Queen from 1952 to 1954. Lady Diana's parents, who had married in 1954, separated in 1967 and the marriage was dissolved in 1969. Earl Spencer later married Raine, Countess of Dartmouth in 1976.

On 24 February 1981 it was officially announced that Lady Diana was to marry The Prince of Wales. As neighbours at Sandringham until 1975, their families had known each other for many years, and Lady Diana and The Prince had met again when he was invited to a weekend at Althorp in November 1977. 
They were married at St Paul's Cathedral in London on 29 July 1981, in a ceremony which drew a global television and radio audience estimated at around 1,000 million people, and hundreds of thousands of people lining the route from Buckingham Palace to the Cathedral. The wedding reception was at Buckingham Palace. 

The tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales occurred on Sunday 31 August 1997 following a car accident in Paris, France.

The vehicle in which The Princess was travelling was involved in a high-speed accident in the Place de l'Alma underpass in central Paris shortly before midnight on Saturday 30 August.

The Princess was taken to the La Pitie Salpetriere Hospital, where she underwent two hours of emergency surgery before being declared dead at 0300 BST. The Princess's companion, Mr Dodi Fayed, and the driver of the vehicle died in the accident, whilst a bodyguard was seriously injured.

The Princess's body was subsequently repatriated to the United Kingdom in the evening of Sunday 31 August by a BAe 146 aircraft of the Royal Squadron. The Prince of Wales and the Princess's elder sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes, accompanied The Princess's coffin on its return journey.

Once elected to the House of Commons, Thatcher rapidly made her way. She had a little luck: in her first session she won the right by ballot to introduce a private member’s bill, which with skill and the help of several ministers she saw through the long parliamentary process into law. In 1961 she was invited to join the government as a junior minister at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance. She became a skilful defender of policies before Parliament, marshalling arguments and statistics with effect. It was a style of speaking that fell short of high rhetoric; she might silence an opponent, but throughout her career as a Conservative frontbencher this most influential of politicians rarely sought to charm an audience and made few concessions to the growing political fashion for wearing hearts on sleeves. Instead she became the archetypal conviction politician, at her best speaking off the cuff, or thinking on her feet in a television interview in combative and plain-spoken style.

In her early years in Parliament, as at the General Election of 1950, Thatcher in some respects found her gender a political advantage. Politics was overwhelmingly the preserve of men when she began her career, and no woman had ever held the highest offices of state, let alone the Premiership. But the major parties needed at least one prominent woman in a leading position. Thatcher was quickly understood to be the most talented Conservative woman in the Commons, and as such was likely to reach cabinet rank. She remained a frontbencher after Labour won the 1964 General Election and entered the shadow cabinet in 1967, following two successful and happy years as deputy to the Shadow Chancellor, Iain Macleod. But her relations with the party leader of the day, Edward Heath, were never good, and she was sometimes dismissed as “the token woman”, not least by some of her colleagues. When the Conservatives won the 1970 General Election she entered the Cabinet as Education Secretary, a post thought appropriate for a woman, which she held for the entire term of the Heath government.