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London is a cosmopolitan mixture of the Third and First Worlds, of chauffeurs and beggars, of the establishment, the avowedly working class and the avant-garde.  Unlike comparable European cities, much of London looks unplanned and grubby, but that is part of its appeal.  Visiting London is like being let loose on a giant-sized Monopoly board clogged with traffic.  Even though you probably won't know where you are exactly, the names will at least look reassuringly familiar.  The city is so enormous, visitors will need to make maximum use of the underground train system: unfortunately, this dislocates the city's geography and makes it hard to get your bearings. Doing some traveling by bus helps fit the city together.

Although a Celtic community settled around a ford across the River Thames, it was the Romans who first developed the square mile now known as the City of London. They built a bridge and an impressive city wall, and made Londinium an important port and the hub of their road system.  The Romans left, but trade went on.  Few traces of London dating from the Dark Ages can now be found, but the city survived the incursions of both the Saxons and Vikings. Fifty years before the Normans arrived, Edward the Confessor built his abbey and palace at Westminster.

William the Conqueror found a city that was, without doubt, the richest and largest in the kingdom.  He raised the White Tower (part of the Tower of London) and confirmed the city's independence and right to self-government.  During the reign of Elizabeth I the capital began to expand rapidly - in 40 years the population doubled to reach 200,000. Unfortunately, medieval Tudor and Jacobean London was virtually destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666.  The fire gave Christopher Wren the opportunity to build his famous churches, but did nothing to halt the city's growth.

By 1720 there were 750,000 people, and London, as the seat of Parliament and focal point for a growing empire, was becoming ever richer and more important. Georgian architects replaced the last of medieval London with their imposing symmetrical architecture and residential squares.  The population exploded again in the 19th century, creating a vast expanse of Victorian suburbs.  As a result of the Industrial Revolution and rapidly expanding commerce, it jumped from 2.7 million in 1851 to 6.6 million in 1901.

London briefly regained its 'cool' reputation in the 1990s, buoyed by Tony Blair's New Labor, a rampaging pound and a swag of pop, style and media 'names'. Blair's blane Ken Livingstone donned the mayoral robes in May 2000, opposing plans to sell off the tube and pushing for improved public transport and safety.  The face of the city changed with the construction of the £1bn white elephant Millennium Dome, the London Eye observation wheel, the Tate Modern (linked by the when-will-it-ever-open Millennium Bridge) and the creation of the British Museum's Great Court. But some things never change: London's cost of living outdoes itself year after year, its chic quotient continues to soar and the gap between the haves and have nots looms ever larger.

England is looking forward into the new century while trying to forget many of the developments of the previous 100 years.  That period witnessed the fall of the empire, the loss of the trading base and the nation's inability to adjust to a diminished role in the modern world - from colonial empire to member of the EC.  But while the family may have taken a right Royal battering, many of the other august institutions at the cornerstone of British life have muddled their way through with a stiff upper lip and a strong sense of protocol.

History - The first-known inhabitants of England were small bands of hunters, but Stone Age immigrants arrived around 4000 BC and farmed the chalk hills of Salisbury Plain, constructing the mysterious stone circles at Stonehenge and Avebury.  They were followed by the Bronze Age Celts from Central Europe who began arriving in 800 BC, bringing the Gaelic and Brythonic languages (the former is still spoken in Scotland, the latter in Wales).

The Romans invaded in 43 AD and took only seven years to quell resistance and control most of England.  The Scottish and Welsh tribes were more of a problem, resulting in the building of Hadrian's Wall across northern England to keep out the marauding Scots.  The Romans brought stability, nice and straight paved roads and Christianity; in return, the Brits gave the Romans a headache and a dent in the empire's expense account.  The Romans were never defeated, they just sort of faded away around 410 AD as their empire declined.

Tribes of heathen Angles, Jutes and Saxons began to move into the vacuum, absorbing the Celts, and local fiefdoms developed. By the 7th century, these fiefdoms had grown into a series of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which had come to collectively think of themselves as English.  By the mid-9th century, Vikings had invaded northern Scotland, Cumbria and Lancashire and the Danes were making inroads into eastern England. By 871, only Wessex - the half-Saxon, half-Celtic country south of the Thames - was under English control.  At this low point, the English managed to neutralise the Vikings' military superiority and began a process of assimilation.

The next invader was William of Normandy (soon to become known as William the Conqueror), who arrived on the south coast of England in 1066 with a force of 12,000 men. After victory at the Battle of Hastings, he replaced English aristocrats with French-speaking Normans. The Normans built impressive castles, imposed a feudal system, administered a census and, once again, began to assimilate with the Saxons.

The next centuries saw a series of royal tiffs, political intrigues, plague, unrest and revolt.  The Hundred Years War with France blurred into the domestic War of the Roses and enough Machiavellian backstabbing among royalty to make the present foibles of the monarchy seem even more trifling than they already are. In the 16th century, Henry VIII's matrimonial difficulties led to the split with Catholicism.  Henry was appointed head of the Church of England by the English Parliament and the Bible was translated into English.  In 1536, Henry dissolved the smaller monasteries and confiscated their land as the relationship between Church and State hit rocky times.

A period of progressive expansionism followed, as England collected colonies down the American coast, licensed the East India Company to operate from Bombay and eventually saw Canada and Australia come within its massive sphere of influence.  At home, England exerted increasing control over the British Isles.  The burgeoning empire's first setback occurred in 1781 when the American colonies won their war of independence.

Meanwhile, Britain was fast becoming the crucible of the Industrial Revolution as steam power, steam trains, coal mines and water power began to transform the means of transport and production.  The world's first industrial cities sprung up in the Midlands, causing severe dislocation of the population. By the time Queen Victoria took the throne in 1837, Britain had become the world's greatest power.  Its fleet dominated the seas, knitting together the British empire, while its factories dominated world trade.  Under prime ministers such as Gladstone and Disraeli, the worst excesses of the Industrial Revolution were addressed; education became universal, trade unions were legalized and most men were enfranchised - women had to wait until after WWI.

Britain bumbled into the stalemate of WWI in 1914, resulting in the senseless slaughter of a million Britons and a widening gulf between the ruling and working classes. The latter set the stage for 50 years of labour unrest, beginning with the 1926 Great Strike and growing throughout the 1930s depression.  Britain dithered through the 1920s and '30s, with mediocre and visionless government, which failed to confront the problems the country faced - including the rise of Hitler and imperial Germany.

Britain's never-say-die character was forged in WWII under the guidance of Winston Churchill.  Britain bounced back from Dunkirk, the relentless Luftwaffe air raids and the fall of Singapore and Hong Kong to win the Battle of Britain and play a vital role in the Allied victory.  Despite the euphoria, Britain's resources and influence were exhausted and its empire declined as first India (1947), then Malaysia (1957) and Kenya (1963) gained their independence.

It took until the 1960s for wartime recovery to be fully completed, but by then Britons had supposedly 'never had it so good', according to their prime minister, Harold Macmillan. The sixties briefly repositioned swinging London back at the cultural heart of the world, as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Mary Quant, David Bailey, Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton and Co strutted their stuff on the world stage.  But the sixties weren't all mini skirts and Sergeant Pepper: factionalism in Northern Ireland became overtly violent, leading to the deployment of British troops in 1969.  The Troubles, as they are euphemistically known, have been dogging the British and Irish governments and ruining Northern Ireland ever since.  The 1970s' oil crisis, massive inflation, the three-day working week and class antagonism also brought reality crashing into the party, and in 1979 the Brits elected matronly Margaret Thatcher to come and mop up their mess for them.

Thatcher broke the unions, privatized national industries, established a meritocracy, sent a flotilla to the Falklands and polarized British society. She became the longest-serving prime minister this century and left such a deep mark on the Brits that even now, going on for a decade after she was dumped by her political party, Baroness Maggie looms large over any discussion of domestic affairs. The ever-so-nice John Major, PM from 1990, failed to rally the nation to the Conservative cause, and was booted out in no uncertain terms in elections in May 1997.

England under PM Tony Blair is a changing place. Asylum seekers, farming, education, health, Northern Ireland and the European Union still polarize opinion, but cautious optimism prevails.  How England responds to the increasingly assertive nationalities of Scotland and Wales, and to the changes caused by closer interaction with Europe, will be primary factors in the future identity of the country.

Culture - England's greatest artistic contributions have come in the fields of theatre, literature and architecture.  The country is also, right or wrong, a treasure house of art and sculpture, from every age and continent.  Most visitors are overwhelmed by the stately homes of the aristocracy, and England's fine collection of castles and cathedrals. Though motorways, high rise and tawdry suburban development characterize England's 20th century architectural heritage, modern architects like Sir Norman Foster and Richard Rodgers are creating dramatic and innovative structures like the Tate Modern, Millennium Bridge and Lloyds of London building. Anyone who has studied English literature at school will remember ploughing through Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens and Morrissey, and painful though it might have been at the time, no-one can deny England's formidable contribution to the Western literary canon.

Perhaps England's greatest cultural export has been the English language, the current lingua franca of the international community.  There are astonishing regional variations in accents, and it is not unusual to find those in southern England claiming to need an interpreter to speak to anyone living north of Oxford.

The majority of English who profess religious beliefs belong to the Church of England, which became independent of Rome in the 16th century. Other significant protestant churches include Methodist, Baptist and Salvation Army. One in 10 Britons consider themselves Catholic, and there are now over a million Muslims and sizeable Hindu, Jewish and Sikh populations.  Despite this variety of religions, most English are fonder of their churches as architectural icons of grandeur and stability than as houses of religious piety.

Though England is not famous for the quality of its cuisine, London's recent renaissance in quality is spreading to the provinces.  Travelers will find a remarkable variety of dining options from all over the world, though those on a budget should be wary of overdosing on fish 'n' chips, eggs 'n' bacon, and sausages 'n' mash.