England

From Join Me

Area of land surrounded by the Celts and sea-water(*). Divided after the Roman withdrawal into areas of Anglo-Saxons, Danish Vikings, Norse Vikings, Franks and remnant Romans, King Alfred united most of the regions in around 867AD - as documented by the Welsh priest Asser - and his son added the last. The name is alleged to derive from a comment made by an early Pope at a slave market in Rome, who described a blonde, blue-eyed British slave as looking like an Angle, or Angel - from which England was arrived at via the Anglo-Saxons (Alfred's Wessex-based tribe.) After King Alfred, Elizabeth I might be said to have been the most important monarch in shaping the current state.

The English football team won the Jules Rimet trophy in 1966.

"England is a great and powerful nation, foremost in human progress, enemy to despotism, the only safe refuge for the exile, friend of the oppressed" - Garibaldi 1854

"An Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say" - Samuel Johnson 1750

• "Britain, an island in the ocean, formerly called Albion, is situated between the north and the west, facing, though at a considerable distance from the coasts of Germany, France and Spain" - The Venerable Bede - Ecclesiastical History 731AD