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Society and culture

 

Leisure and entertainment

 

Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements. London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district, whilst just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops and London's "Avenue of Stars" which honours achievers in the entertainment industry.

 

London's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a mainstream shopping street nearly 2 km long. The adjoining Bond Street in Mayfair is a more upmarket location along with the Knightsbridge area - home to the Harrods department store - to the southwest. The districts of Knightsbridge (Sloane Street), Mayfair (Bond Street, Brook Street), and Chelsea (King's Road) represent London's prestigious role in the world of fashion, being an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan, New York and Tokyo. Furthermore, London has a number of markets, including Camden Market for fashions, Portobello Road for antiques and Borough Market for foods.

 

London offers a huge variety of cuisines as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Well-known gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food of Chinatown. Soho offers a variety of relatively cheap international restaurants, whilst more upmarket restaurants are scattered around central London, with concentrations in Mayfair. Across the city, areas home to particular ethnic groups are often recognisable by restaurants, food shops and market stalls offering their local fare, and even the large supermarkets stock such items in areas with sizeable ethnic groups.

 

The Caribbean-descended community in Notting Hill in West London organises the colourful Notting Hill Carnival, Europe's biggest street carnival, every summer. The beginning of the year is celebrated with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, whilst traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a very formal military pageant to celebrate the (official) Queen's Birthday.

 

 

Literature and film

 

London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, famous among other things for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets is a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. James Boswell's biographical Life of Johnson mostly takes place in London, and is the source of Johnson's famous aphorism: "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work -- most notably his play The Alchemist -- was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the afore-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's famous Sherlock Holmes stories. The 1933 novel Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell describes life in poverty in both cities. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor. Along with Bloomsbury, the hilly area of Hampstead has traditionally been the literary heartland of London.



 

Traditionally, London has played a significant role in the film industry, and boasts major studios at Pinewood and Shepperton, both just outside West London, as well as an important special effects and post-production community. Many films have also used London as a location and have done much to shape international perceptions of the city. See main article London in film.

 

The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including the Central School of Speech and Drama, whose past students include Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (educators of Jim Broadbent and Donald Sutherland amongst others) and the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (past students including Joan Collins and Roger Moore).

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Sport

 

London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.

 

London's most popular sport (for both participants and spectators) is football. Six FA Premier League teams are from London — Arsenal, Charlton Athletic, Chelsea, Fulham, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United (and also Watford F.C. and Reading F.C., though located outside of Greater London's boundaries, they are often considered London teams). London in total has 12 League Football teams located within 'the boroughs' and has countless non-league and amateur football teams.

 

London also has four rugby union teams in the Guinness Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and NEC Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London), as well as a rugby league Super League club in Harlequins RL. London also has many famous other rugby union clubs in lower leagues, including Richmond F.C., Blackheath R.C. and Barnes R.F.C.

 

Wembley Stadium (which is currently being rebuilt) has traditionally been the home of the English national football team, and serves as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final. Twickenham Stadium in west London is the national rugby union stadium.

 

Cricket in London centres on its two Test cricket grounds at Lord's (home of Middlesex CC) in St John's Wood, and The Oval (home of Surrey CC) in Kennington.

 

One of London's most well-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon. Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a 42 km course around the city, and the Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race.

 

 

ANNOTATIONS

 

 


Date: 2015-12-24; view: 732


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