🎭A Modern, Thriving Society

The 2011 census (the data the handbook uses) reported:

• ~59% Christian — predominantly Church of England (Anglican), with sizeable Catholic and Methodist communities
• ~25% reported no religion
• ~5% Muslim
• ~1.5% Hindu
• ~0.8% Sikh
• ~0.5% Jewish
• ~0.4% Buddhist

The Church of England is the established church in England — the monarch is its Supreme Governor; the Archbishop of Canterbury is its senior cleric. The Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) is the national church of Scotland but is not "established" in the same constitutional sense. There is no established church in Wales or Northern Ireland.

Each nation has a patron saint with a feast day:

• St George — England — 23 April — slayer of the dragon
• St Andrew — Scotland — 30 November — first disciple of Jesus
• St David — Wales — 1 March — a 6th-century monk
• St Patrick — Northern Ireland — 17 March — converted Ireland to Christianity

St Patrick's Day and St Andrew's Day are bank holidays in Northern Ireland and Scotland respectively. St George's Day and St David's Day are not bank holidays. The test loves these dates — memorise all four.

Key festivals:

• Christmas Day (25 December) and Boxing Day (26 December) — both bank holidays UK-wide
• Easter — Good Friday and Easter Monday are bank holidays; date varies (March/April)
• New Year's Day (1 January) — bank holiday UK-wide; the Scottish equivalent Hogmanay is celebrated more heavily than in England
• Bonfire Night (5 November) — Guy Fawkes Night, commemorating the failure of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament. Not a bank holiday but widely observed with fireworks.
• Remembrance Day (11 November) — the moment WWI ended in 1918; observed with two minutes' silence at 11 AM. The closest Sunday is Remembrance Sunday. Red poppies are worn from late October onwards.
• Diwali, Eid al-Fitr, Hanukkah, Vaisakhi — major non-Christian festivals widely celebrated in the UK's religious communities.

Sport runs deep in British culture. The handbook tests on:

• Football — the most popular spectator sport. The Premier League is the top tier. The FA Cup is the oldest football competition in the world (founded 1872). Each of the four UK nations has its own national football team.
• Rugby — two versions, Union and League. The Six Nations Championship features England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France and Italy. Rugby World Cup is held every four years.
• Cricket — invented in England; played at international level since the 19th century. The Ashes is the biennial test series between England and Australia.
• Tennis — Wimbledon is the world's oldest tennis tournament (since 1877). Andy Murray won Wimbledon in 2013 and 2016 — the first British men's singles winner since Fred Perry in 1936.
• Golf — invented in Scotland. The Open Championship is the world's oldest golf tournament (since 1860).
• Horse racing — The Grand National (Aintree) and Royal Ascot are the biggest meetings.
• The Olympics — London has hosted three times: 1908, 1948 and 2012.
• Formula 1 — the British Grand Prix (Silverstone) is one of the oldest races on the calendar.

Music: classical composers include Henry Purcell, Edward Elgar (Pomp and Circumstance Marches, including Land of Hope and Glory), Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten and Henry Wood (founder of The Proms). Rock and pop: The Beatles (Liverpool, 1960s) are the best-selling band in history. The BBC Proms run every summer at the Royal Albert Hall, ending with the famous Last Night of the Proms. Literature: in addition to Shakespeare and Chaucer (Chapter 3 material), the handbook mentions Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings), J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter). The Booker Prize is the leading UK literary award. Theatre: London's West End is a major theatre district, second only to Broadway in size.

The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) was founded in 1922 and is funded primarily by the licence fee paid by everyone who watches live TV broadcasts in the UK. It is editorially independent of government. The BBC operates television, radio, and online services. Other major TV channels: ITV (commercial, founded 1955), Channel 4 (commercial but publicly owned), Channel 5. National newspapers split between "broadsheet" (The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Financial Times) and "tabloid" (The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror).

Education is compulsory from age 5 to 16 (in Northern Ireland, from 4). State schools are free; private schools (confusingly called "public schools" in older usage) charge fees. The main exams: GCSEs (taken at 16) and A-Levels (taken at 18, the main university entrance qualification). Scotland uses a separate system with National 5s and Highers. The UK has world-leading universities — the handbook specifically mentions Oxford and Cambridge (the oldest), along with the universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews and Glasgow as historic Scottish institutions. The handbook does not give specific founding years (Oxford "is the oldest" without a date).

The Society topic page has live practice questions on this chapter. The Saints & Festivals cheat sheet and the Sport cheat sheet compress the most-tested material onto single printable pages.