Dateline

Beijing, China

The Great Haul of China

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Team GB brought back to Britain 47 medals, completing its best national Olympic performance since 1908.[/caption]

BRITAIN WILDLY CELEBRATED its best Olympic performance in 100 years at the Beijing games. Team GB, as it has been known, won 19 gold medals and came away with 47 medals overall—the fourth best national performance in the 2008 games. Scotland’s Chris Hoy, an ironman on the cycling track, collected three golds—the most for a British athlete in a century.
Britons garnered the most medals in rowing, sailing and cycling. Swimmer Rebecca Adlington collected two gold medals in the pool, including in the 400-meter freestyle, to become Britain’s first female Olympic swimming champion since 1960. Track and field, boxing and canoeing also brought medals for Team GB. All this athletic success and newfound enthusiasm bodes well for the United Kingdom as it undertakes the daunting task of staging the 2012 games in London.

Buckingham Palace, London

Her Majesty’s Garden Parties

THEY CAN SCARCELY be called intimate affairs, but invitations to the Queen’s annual summer Buckingham Palace garden parties are always highly coveted. Again this year, Her Majesty hosted a series of three parties, each catering for a guest list of 8,000. Accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh and other members of the family, the Queen takes about an hour visiting with wellvetted folks on her way to the tea tent for a royal cuppa. Guests at the garden parties customarily consume more than 25,000 cups of tea, 20,000 sandwiches and as many slices of cake.

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The Queen takes tea at Buckingham Palace with 8,000 guests.[/caption]

And Just in Passing

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Good news for travelers![/caption]

POUND PLUMMETS AGAINST THE DOLLAR

American travelers have been moaning the exchange rate for several years, while the pound hovered at &doller;2. Britain’s economic weakness, though, has seen the pound sterling steadily losing ground recently against a basket of foreign currencies. The dollar is now at its strongest in six years—at under &doller;1.80 as of this writing.

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200 pipe bands invade.[/caption]

MAKING A JOYFUL NOISE IN GLASGOW

More than 8,500 pipers and drummers took part in Glasgow’s fifth annual International Piping Festival. Bands from the United States, Pakistan, Australia and Canada joined the Scottish contingent. The festival’s grand finale saw 200 bands belting it out to be World Pipe Band Champion.

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Spuds for suds, anyone?[/caption]

BARTERING FOR BEER MAKES SENSE IN NORFOLK

At The Pigs pub in Edgefield, Norfolk, regular customers have their own way around the credit crunch. A sign in the pub promises, “If you grow, breed, shoot or steal anything that may look at home on our menu, bring it in and let’s do a deal.” Chard, potatoes, mackerel and eggs, and locally shot rabbits, pheasants and pigeons are among the goods making their way onto the pub’s menu in exchange for pints and pub meals.

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700 children’s stories later?[/caption]

ENID BLYTON VOTED BRITAIN’S BEST-LOVED AUTHOR

A nationwide poll resulting in a list of adult readers’ 50 best-loved authors found children’s author Enid Blyton beating out the literary luminaries for first place. While Dickens, Shakespeare and Jane Austen figure in the top 10, it is clear that the stories of childhood remain close to our hearts. Roald Dahl and J.K. Rowling finished second and third.

Purbeck, Dorset

Britain’s Country Crusade for Crude

WHILE THE United States continues dithering over offshore drilling, Britain’s new oil rush is onshore. As the global grab for crude presages continued higher oil prices, the UK is anxious to guarantee its own energy supplies. Currently the biggest onshore oilfield is BP’s Wytch Farm in Purbeck, which last year produced 7.6 million barrels of oil.
Experts speculate that 100 million barrels may lie in reserve along the south coast, with other large deposits concentrated in Lincolnshire and the East Midlands. This spring the government awarded a record 97 new licenses to 54 companies for onshore oil and gas exploration. The great onshore oil hunt is not without controversy, however. Naturally, environmental groups are concerned, and in the English countryside aesthetic considerations are considerable. As Jacquetta Fewster, director of the South Downs Society laments, “Drilling for oil isn’t compatible with a place that should be for quiet contemplation and getting away from urban life.”

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Wytch Farm, Dorset, pumps oil.[/caption]

Wick, Glamorgan

Olympic Cyclist Makes Welsh History

BRITAIN’S FIRST Olympic gold went to cyclist Nicole Cooke. The 25-year-old athlete from the village of Wick in the Vale of Glamorgan won the Women’s Road Race, cycling the 78-mile course in three hours, 32 minutes and 24 seconds, racing in heavy rain throughout. The medal represented the 200th gold medal of Britain’s Olympic history, and Cooke became Wales’ first Olympic gold-medal champion since 1972.

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Nicole Cooke of Wick, Glamorgan, became Wales’ first Olympic gold medal winner since 1972.[/caption]

Cardiff, Wales

Only Men Aloud! Stand as Last Choir

IT WAS AN all-Welsh finale for the BBC’s summer series Last Choir Standing. Week by week, competing choirs were knocked out or advanced by popular vote of the television audience. When the London choir Revelation was eliminated on the final show, the mixed choir Ysgol Glanaethwy from Bangor and Cardiff’s Only Men Aloud! faced off for the title. The 18-voice male choir stood last, singing the Welsh Rugby team anthem, Cwm Rhondda (“Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah”), “Don’t Rain On My Parade” and “All By Myself.”

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The 18-voice male choir from Cardiff blew the audience away with superb execution and fresh style.[/caption]

Wokingham, Berkshire

Crash Slams Middle Britain

JUST AS HERE IN THE STATES, Britain is reeling from the collapse of the credit market and a subsequent tumultuous fall in the real estate market. Forecasters project that average middle class homes will lose £40,000 in value (more than £100 a day) this year. Typical properties are expected to drop 13 to 18 percent in market value. Economists predict that by the end of 2010 prices could be down 35 percent from last year’s market high. Mortgage lending has slowed by 32 percent over last year and many face the prospect of negative equity in their home loans. With markedly increased inflation rates over the summer, the British economy faces a grim short-term future. It’s enough to make you want to barter for beer.

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Middle Britain takes a hit in the housing crunch.[/caption]

And Just in Passing

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Sounds like a good cause.[/caption]

FIRST-TIME AUTHOR USES ROYALTIES TO HELP FRIENDS

At 93, Lorna Page had big plans for the proceeds of her first novel, A Dangerous Weakness. The literary nonagenarian swapped her one-bedroom flat for a five-bedroom residence in Weare Gifford, Devon. She wanted a bigger house so that she could invite friends to escape their nursing homes and come and live with her.

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It took six months to complete.[/caption]

THE WORLD’S BIGGEST JIGSAW IN STOKE-ON-TRENT

Eric Smith, 73, of Baddeley Green took six months to complete the world’s largest jigsaw. The 24,000-piece puzzle measures 12 feet by 6 feet and now proudly stands in his garage. He took 537 hours over 179 days to finish the colorful mural of fish, birds, mammals, buildings and planets. No pieces were missing.

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Allegiance questioned.[/caption]

OATH TO QUEEN FACES LEGAL CHALLENGE

Judges, bishops, peers and police constables are among those in addition to MPs who must swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen. Now, the antimonarchy campaign group Republic hopes to force a judicial review on the grounds of discrimination through a test case where a new magistrate or MP refuses to take the oath.

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Here’s one for you, Jim.[/caption]

STILL PULLING PINTS AT AGE 100

Britain’s oldest bartender is centenarian Jim Christou, who in his retirement has been tending bar at the Westwood Masonic Centre in Welling, Kent, for more than 20 years. Christou has no plans to give up the bar. “It certainly helps keep you active,” he says, “and that’s just what I need at my age.”

Shoreditch, London

Digging Shakespeare’s First Theater

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The Shoreditch discovery delights Shakespeareans.[/caption]

IRONICALLY ENOUGH, it was during site preparation for a new theater in Shoreditch that excavations have uncovered remains of one of London’s earliest playhouses—and the first in which William Shakespeare took the stage. Shakespeare first joined the company of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men and had his first plays performed at this open-air playhouse. Museum of London archaeologists are calling it one of the most exciting finds in recent years.
Called simply The Theatre, its existence has long been known. Up to now, however, its exact location had proved elusive. The finds have researchers buzzing over this tantalizing new glimpse into Shakespeare’s London and Elizabethan theater.

RAF Fairford, Gloucestershire

Flyby Marks RAF’s 90th Birthday

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A squadron of Tornadoes flies in formation during the flyby at RAF Fairford celebrations.[/caption]

THIS SUMMER, the largest Royal Air Force ceremony in more than 30 years commemorated the 90th anniversary of the service’s founding. The Queen took the salute, presented new Colours to the service and watched a flyby of 90 RAF aircraft. The 35-mile air procession represented one-sixth of the entire air force. Addressing 64 squadrons and 5,000 guests, the Queen pronounced herself “enormously impressed” and told them they should be “immensely proud” of their work. The parade and flyby was the largest staged RAF event since a 1977 Silver Jubilee review at RAF Finningley in South Yorkshire.

Bracknell, Berkshire

A Soggy Summer Dampens Spirits

THE MET OFFICE IN suburban Bracknell, Britain’s national weather service since 1854, has confirmed what most Brits already felt in their bones: It was a miserable, wet and dull summer across most of the country. Above average rainfall every month from March through August left the island waterlogged. Prognostications in early July that this would be one of the rainiest summers on record have proven true. In August, Britain got only 67 percent of average sunshine along with 154 percent of average rainfall, making it the dullest August since 1929. A few days at the end of July were all the summer most folks seemed to get.

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It was a washout this day at Whitley Bay beach.[/caption]

The Strand, London

Turner Exhibition at the Courtauld

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The J.M.W. Turner watercolor, Colchester, Essex, sits in good company at the Courtauld Gallery.[/caption]

A RECENT BEQUEST of nine watercolors brings to 30 the Courtauld Gallery’s collection of J.M.W. Turner paintings. For the first time, the collection is being shown in its entirety in a highly anticipated exhibition, “Paths to Fame: Turner Watercolours from The Courtauld,” that runs from October 30 to January 25.
The Courtauld’s own superb collection will be supplemented by additional Turners from the Tate and other galleries. They will be accompanied by a display of the entire watercolor collection of the Sharf bequest to the Somerset House gallery, which includes paintings by John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough and Richard Parkes Bonington.
Open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., at £5 admission, the Turner exhibition is sure to be one of the major cultural events of the winter.

And Just in Passing

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Rock carvings by the thousands[/caption]

PREHISTORIC ART DISCOVERIES IN THE NORTH

Volunteers working with English Heritage have discovered more than 100 new examples of ancient rock carvings on boulders and bedrock across Northumberland and Durham. The 5,000-year-old Neolithic abstract art adds to thousands of examples archaeologists have discovered across the North Country in recent years.

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Pinpointing his landing in Kent.[/caption]

CAESAR CAME AND SAW A FEW DAYS EARLIER

There has always been some scholarly debate about just when Julius Caesar actually arrived on Britain’s shores, though August 26-27, 55 BC, has been generally believed to be the date, Now, researchers from Texas State University-San Marcos have reconciled Caesar’s own account with the tidal streams and lunar cycles to conclude the Romans actually landed at Deal on August 22-23.