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The British have traditionally not been very good at making great films. We leave that to Hollywood, whilst instead we make and export great music. It seems that great British movies come along every 25 to 30 years or so. 1981 gave us Chariots of Fire. 2008 gave us Slumdog Millionaire, which...

The old gentlemen at Lord's (England's national cricket stadium) in London may not be too happy to hear this. But, according to an academic, the ancient sport of cricket wasn't invented in England but was, in fact, invented in Continental Europe. He points to a 16th century work, attributed...

Britain has the worst air pollution from traffic in Europe, according to a government report. The fumes on certain stretches of British roads breach safety levels in a whopping 95% of cities and regions in the UK, compared with 82% in Austria, 52% in Germany and just 21% in France. This...

This is only the third year that Croke Park in Dublin has hosted rugby union's Six Nation's Championship. It is usually a stadium for gaelic football, the Republic of Ireland's national sport. However, with Landsdowne Road having been demolished to make way for the new Aviva Stadium, the...

A man has spent 30 years building a scale model of Herod's Temple in his garden - and it's still not completed. Mr Garrard has constructed the huge model in his garden in Norfolk using thousands of clay bricks and tiles, each one he baked and painted himself. His model has so impressed...

A famous photograph taken in 1940 shows plumes of black smoke surrounding London's St Paul's Cathedral (which miraculously, and thankfully, survived as all around it was being razed) as German bombers nightly discharged hundreds of bombs and incendiary devices causing devastation across the...

Only the British are probably eccentric enough to play a game of football which has HUNDREDS of players taking part and the nets are three MILES apart. But that is what happened yesterday when the annual Shrove Tueday football matches took place the length and breadth of the nation. The...

Millions of people have had their computers infected with a virus or a worm that, for example, can be transmitted through unexpected emails that trigger the worm when they are opened. However, Mark Taylor from Yeovil, Somerset, had a REAL worm in his computer. After seeing an error message...

The most famous mutiny in history was probably that which occurred onboard the Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty in 1789 when Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers rose up against the captain, William Bligh, and 18 of his loyal men. But at least those men were allowed to be cast adrift in a...

A new statue of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother was unveiled yesterday in London. The Queen Mother was the Queen during World War II (before, of course, she became the Queen Mother) and was married to King George VI, or Bertie as she called him. George VI and Queen Elizabeth famously...

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has sent his condolences to Tory leader David Cameron after his son died today, aged six. Ivan Cameron suffered cerebral palsy and epilepsy and died this morning at St Mary's Hospital in London after falling ill during the night. Cameron and his wife Samantha were...

Michel Platini, the UEFA president, has for a long time given people the suspicion that he is anti-English (and there has always seemed to be a bit of an anti-English agenda at UEFA, European football's governing body, as a whole). The Mirror's Brian Reade used to be dubious about these...

The town of Hartlepool on the eastern coast of England has an interesting history. In 1914, during World War I, the town was partially destroyed by the German Navy. Tragically, 86 civilians were killed. In 1805, during the Napoleonic Wars, a French ship sank in the area. Its only survivor, a...

What can be more quintessentially British than helping in the war effort..... by making buns to keep troops' morale up? And if British soldiers in Afghanistan are enjoying their fruit cakes, they have a mum to thank. Louise Bennett, who lives near Glasgow in Scotland, has a son in the Royal...

2009 is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, and the 150th anniversary of his book "On The Origin Of Species." To celebrate, the Mail has tracked down 13 of the Great British scientist's 100 living desendants. Darwin had 10 children but, because of Victorian Britain's terrible...

Today, the coastal resort of Blackpool, in Lancashire, in the North West of England, is Britain's biggest seaside resort, with 10 million visitors a year. Its giant fairground, the Pleasure Beach, famous for its Pepsi Max Big One (which was the tallest, steepest and fastest rollercoaster in the...

A giant rabbit led police on a wild goose-chase (or should that be rabbit-chase?) as it managed to escape and cause chaos in a town centre. The rabbit, sarcastically named Tiny, is the size of a small dog and brought traffic to a standstill in Canterbury, Kent. Bunny and Clyde: Tiny the...

The "A Walk In History" site is a website in which the author undertakes historical tours of London and then writes about them. This tour of the great city is all about the Gordon Riots of 1780. The Gordon Riots refers to a number of events in a predominantly Protestant religious uprising in...

Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, may be released from the Broadmoor loony bin after having been signed off as low-risk. Sutcliffe was given 20 life sentences in 1981 for the murder of 13 women between 1975 and 1980 across Yorkshire and in Manchester. He also attempted to kill 7 other...

English is the language of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Jonathan Swift, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and the Bronte Sisters. And the uninflected Germanic language of England is also the most widespread, being the official language of 53 nations, most of...