IV. Answer the questions.

1. How were Elizabethan gardens planned?

2. Describe the importance of the herb garden.

3. Give an outline of British gardens in the 16th century.

4. Examine Britain's greatest contribution to the art of gardening in the 18th century.

5. Who were the enthusiastic intellectuals and writers who gave the landscape movement its initial impetus?

6. What countries influenced the development of the English landscape garden?

7. Why is William Kent regarded as one of the most distinguished garden designers?

8. Give an account of the work of the most outstanding landscape gardener of the 18th century Capability Brown.

9. Examine the contribution of Humphry Repton to landscape gardening and his style in garden designs.

10. Comment on the importance of the invention of Budding's lawn-mower.

Points for discussion

1. Who contributed to the creation of the English landscape garden?

2. What makes the landscape garden essentially English?

3. What did Walpole mean when he wrote of the enthusiasts who made the English landscape. "They leaped the fence and saw that all nature was a garden?"

Leisure and Sports

The attitude to leisure has been much influ­enced by the great love of the British of moving around and by the ease of travel. Industrial and professional workers have their annual holiday with pay, and so they can spend it as they like. Factory holidays are much concentrated in the period between mid-July and mid-August. Many people who have schoolchildren usually take their holiday also in summer, because British schools usually have only six weeks off in summer, from about mid-July to the end of August.

The coast is the most popular place where the British spend their annual holiday, and seaside resorts have many hotels. Food in British hotels and restaurants is quite cheap, but rooms are not. Few British people rent houses or flats for their holidays, but one of the traditional ways of spending a summer holiday is in a boarding-house, which may have a card in its window advertising "apartments" or "bed and breakfast".

In seaside towns there are whole streets of houses almost every one of which has such a notice in its window. Some boarding-houses provide all meals for their guests, others provide breakfast only. There are also lots of so-called holiday camps at the sea. Their name is misleading, because they are really holiday towns or villages. They consist usually of great numbers of small, very comfortable homes, rather like those of a motel, to­gether with central dining halls, dance halls, swimming-pools, lots of attractions, shops, parking for cars — everything a fam­ily would need during a holiday.

Camping holidays in the proper sense of the word, with tents, are not so well developed in Britain as in France; the summer weather too often can be very unpleasant for tent-dwellers. On the other „ hand, caravans have become very popular. Some people bring their own caravans, pulling them behind their cars, others hire caravans, already in position. Very few British people have summer houses, of the type so popular in Scandinavia, or of dachas so popular in Belarus, or Russia, to visit for holidays and weekends. A caravan, pulled by the family car, can provide good opportunities for holiday making.

The British love to take to new places. Many take their cars together with their tents and caravans and cross the Channel in ferries to get to some distant spot on the French, or Spanish coast to enjoy the sun and the warm waters of the sea. Some, when they are away, have problems with the local shops, especially those which sell handicraft. The British tourists lose much energy, thinking what to buy, struggling to convert the prices into English pounds and pence. When they get home again they can talk endlessly of their purchases and complain of what they were asked to pay for cups of tea or glasses of wine.

The British are great lovers of competitive sports. When they do not play or watch games they like to talk about them, and when they cannot do that they think about them. The game that is especially connected with England is cricket. Many other games too are English in origin; they have become popular in other countries; but cricket has become popular only in some countries like Australia, India, South Africa and the West Indies. So cricket continues to be a game which expresses the British spirit.

Organized amateur cricket is played between club teams mainly on Saturday afternoons. Nearly every village, except in the far north, has its cricket club. A first-class match, as played between English counties, lasts for up to three days, with six hours' play on each day. The game is thus indeed slow, and a spectator, sitting in the afternoon sun after his lunch of sandwiches and beer, may even have a little sleep for half an hour. The game is played between two teams, each of 11 people. They play on a grass field at the centre of which is the pitch (playing zone). The aim is for one team (the batsmen) to win a large number of runs by hitting the ball with a bat bowled (thrown) to them by the other team in the field (the fielders). The fielders try to send the batsmen out of the game as quickly as possible, for example, by catching a ball hit by a batsman before it touches the ground.

However, for the great mass of the British public the eight months of the football season are more important than the four months of cricket. There are plenty of amateur football (or soccer) clubs, but professional football is big business. Every large town has at least one professional football club. The players may not personally have any personal connections with the town for whose team they play. They are bought and sold with their agreement between the clubs.

Money has invaded the world of football through the football pools, which are a big system of betting on the results of these games. English league football is organized in four Divisions with 22 or 24 teams in each. Besides the League games there is also a knock-out contest each season for the Football Association Cup, and the Cup Final, which is played in May each year in London. This is, of course, the greatest event of the season.

Rugby football (or rugger) is played with an egg-shaped ball, which may be carried and thrown (but not forward). If a player is carrying the ball he may be tackled or attacked and made to fall down. Each team has 15 players, who spend much time lying in the mud or on top of each other and become very dirty, but they do not need to wear such protective clothing as men playing American football who look like ice-hockey players.

Rugby is a game very popular at the schools where they have good playing fields for that. Boys normally play rugger or soccer in winter and cricket in summer Grass hockey is also widely played at schools by boys and girls. Schoolgirls like to play tennis.

Golf and tennis are played by great numbers of people. Golf courses are meeting places of people of different social background. There are plenty of tennis clubs, but every town provides numerous tennis courts in public parks, and anyone may play tennis on a court for a small payment. The greatest event in tennis is the Wimbledon international tennis championship held near London. The ancient game of bowls is played mainly by middle-aged people. In the game a heavy wooden ball (bowl) is rolled over a smooth lawn (bowling green) in such a way that it stops as close as possible to a small white ball (jack). The game has from two to eight players, each bowling two or more bowls. The game may be played indoors in specially built halls.

Another popular spectator sport in British life is horse racing. There are many race tracks all over the country, and each of these has from two to about six "meetings" every year, with each meeting consisting of two, three or four days of racing. There are totalisators at the race-courses, but bookmakers are also allowed to take the bets of the spectators.

When there are races people all over the country bet on the results. A famous race-course is located near Epsom, where a popular annual horse race is held. The-event is named after the Earl of Derby who first organized such a race in 1780.The Derby Cup usually attracts rich and well-to-do people because the tickets are very expensive. Such people also "show off" in their best clothes. For an ordinary working man a visit to horse races may be quite a rare thing, though he may make bets on most days of the week. However, he can easily go to dog races if he wants to. In nearly every town there is at least one greyhound racing track, on which races are held on Saturday afternoons and on several evenings a week after working hours. There are 89 tracks in Britain. The dogs race round a track after an electric "hare", which is really a trolley carrying a piece of meat. Bets are placed on the dogs.

Another popular game is bingo or lotto, which is usually played in halls or former cinemas. Players buy cards with rows of numbers and cross off the numbers as they are called out by a special an­nouncer. The winner is the first player to cross out all the numbers on his or her card. Today it is also possible to play bingo by filling in cards which are published in the newspapers.

Athletic sports and gymnastics are practised at school. Jogging is becoming more popular today, but still it isn't as popular as in the United States or Canada. The same may be said about bicycle racing. On the other hand, rowing, in fours and eights, occupies a leading place in the sporting life of schools and universities which have suitable water nearby, and several regattas held mainly in summer are watched from the river banks by large crowds of spectators. Among these is the Henley Royal Regatta held every year in late June and early July on the river Thames at Henley near Oxford.

When the British people use the word hunting they usually mean fox-hunting which is a popular sport among the rich. Specially trained hounds are brought to the "meet" where the hunt starts. The horses too are brought in vans. The riders usually wearing "pink" (that is, red coats) make a very colourful sight. Having received permission from the local farmers the hunt for the fox starts. There are many people who consider fox-hunting to be cruel. They take action to prevent the hunt, and this leads to clashes between the supporters and those opposed to this sport.

Americans use the word "hunting" to include the shooting of birds, but the British do not. The shooting season in Britain starts in August in the north of England and in Scotland. Once again this is the sport of the rich, as well as the fishing of salmon and trout in some of the rivers of Scotland and Wales for which you have to pay much. All around the coasts there is sea-fishing, mainly from piers and from boats, and in inland waters there is coarse fishing (catching the ordinary fish well known in our country) with many competitions.

Britain was the first home of many of the modern world's most popular sports. However, the British cannot claim to be the best, even in these sports. The British pay much attention to the "sporting spirit", which means to play with respect for the rules and the opponents, to win a competition with modesty and to lose with good temper. They apply this sportsmanship not only to sports, but to a person's behaviour in everyday life.

Comprehension Check