An evening at the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris will provide lots of insights on Northern Ireland, a nation with a still fluctuating identity and status 101 years after its creation. Activist art, thought and song will all combine on 8 June. The Government of Ireland Act that came into force on 3 May 1921, … Continue reading “Everything You Wanted to Know about Northern Ireland”
St David’s Day, 1 March, is Wales’s national day, in honour of its patron saint. This year, the Welsh government is encouraging people to share “random acts of Welshness” on social media. So what are some distinctively Welsh things to do on 1 March? You can see some of them in this short video: the … Continue reading “Random Acts of Welshness for St David’s Day”
Every year, the Education Ministry finances 400 courses in language and culture in EU countries for language teachers in primary or secondary. Applications need to be in by 17 January 2022. The two-week courses take place during the summer holidays. This year there are two in Dublin and two in Norwich (England), from 11 to … Continue reading “Travel to Dublin or Norwich for Language Training Courses”
Queen Elizabeth II has awarded a George Cross medal to the National Health Service. It is one of the highest honours that can be awarded to British civilians, for “acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger.” On 5 July, the 73rd anniversary of the creation of … Continue reading “Queen Honours NHS Heroes”
The summer holidays are approaching, and it’s time for tennis with the Wimbledon tournament. These short videos will make an entertaining end-of-term activity. Wimbledon is a British tradition, even for people who are not sports fans. But that doesn’t mean they have to take themselves too seriously, as this short trailer shows. A nice opportunity … Continue reading “Wimbledon 2021 Videos”
For two weeks every summer, London is the world capital of tennis. Wimbledon is more than just a tennis tournament. It’s a national institution with some typically British eccentricities. This year’s tournament is from 28 June to 11 July. British tennis players have not dominated world tennis historically. Andy Murray has rectified that somewhat in … Continue reading “Time for Tennis at Wimbledon”
Tennis has a very idiosyncratic scoring system, and no one is sure why. Most sports count points by ones. But in a game of tennis, the players don’t start at zero, they start at “love”. If one player then scores, they have 15. The next score is 30, so you would probably expect the following … Continue reading “What’s the Score?”
This giant sculpture has been installed as a message to the G7 leaders meeting for a summit in Cornwall, England. It’s made entirely of electronic waste and is designed to draw attention to the environmental problems caused by the 53 million tonnes of phones, tablets, computers and other electronic devices discarded every year. The sculpture, … Continue reading “Mount Recyclemore”
The Five Eyes Alliance is a very discreet intelligence-gathering agreement between five major Anglophone countries: the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It was created during the Cold War with the former Soviet Union. But it is currently in turmoil over the five nations’ relations with China. The Alliance has existed in its … Continue reading “Five Eyes”
If you would like to explore the debate around a possible second Scottish independence referendum, IndyRef2, in class, these videos have some useful material. We already featured a Scottish National Party Party Political broadcast from before the 6 May elections in our article. This one was published after the election results. Its message is pretty … Continue reading “Scottish Independence Debate Videos”
