British Cultural Festivals

Notting Hill Carnival Notting Hill Carnival takes place in London on Sunday and Monday of the August bank holiday weekend. The backbone of Carnival is the parade(masquerade ) of costumed bands that winds its way through the centre of the event. Crowds line up along the route, and Ladbroke Grove becomes a seething throng of floats and flags, sequins and feathers, as the masquerade bands cruise along, their revellers dancing up a storm to the tunes bouncing from the music trucks. And for the next two days, the only thing that matters is the delicious, anarchic freedom of dancing on the London streets.

ROBIN HOOD FESTIVAL IN SHERWOOD FOREST For the first week of August each year, in celebration of Nottinghamshire’s legendary outlaw, Sherwood Forest is transported back to the thirteenth century. Over a quarter of a century, the Robin Hood Festival has grown into a pop-up village of sorts, with stalls and attractions spread across about a square half-mile of woodland that can be circumnavigated comfortably in an hour or so.

EDINBURGH FRINGE festival The Edinburgh Festival is, strictly speaking, about five festivals. There’s the Book Festival, home to top authors and commentators and set in leafy Charlotte Square; the International Festival, which hosts lush, clever productions of the high arts; the Art Festival, which gathers together special exhibitions and regular galleries; and the Fringe, which is what most people mean when they talk airily of the Festival, bulging with all manner of comedy, theatre and music from pros and amateurs.

CHINESE NEW YEAR in LIVERPOOL With the oldest Chinese community in Europe, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century, and one of the largest in number as well, Liverpool makes an obvious destination to celebrate Chinese New Year without hopping on a plane to Shanghai. With beautifully intricate decorations, including two hundred dragons, it has been positioned in accordance with feng shui principles to bring good luck to the community.

Aldeburgh Festival  The Aldeburgh Festival is an English arts festival where classical music concerts take place during the summer. The Festival was started in 1948 by Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears and the librettist Eric Crozier. They started the festival so that the English Opera Group would have a place to perform their operas, but soon the festival became bigger. Nowadays a lot of Britten’s music is played at the festival, but music by many other composers can be heard as well.

Trooping the Colour The official birthday of Queen Elizabeth II is marked each year by a military parade and march-past, known as Trooping the Colour (Carrying of the Flag). The official name is “the Queen’s Birthday Parade”. Each June, the Queen and other members of the Royal Family attend the Trooping the Colour ceremony on Horse Guards Parade Whitehall in London. The Queen attends the ceremony to take the salute from thousands of guardsmen who parade the Colour (their regiment's flag).

Royal National Eisteddfod The centrepiece of Welsh culture (originally meaning “a meeting of bards”), is very much a Welsh festival and Wales’ biggest single annual event. The vast fields host art, craft, literature, rock music, Welsh-language lessons, theatre and major music and poetry competitions.

Belfast Festival at Queen’s The Belfast Festival at Queen’s is an annual arts festival held in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Major arts festival, Ireland’s equivalent to Edinburgh, nowadays completes with its very own Fringe and is running for two weeks from the middle of October.

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