an counties*; Avon, Bedford, Berkshire, Buckingham,
Cambridge, Cheshire, Cleveland, Cornwall, Cumbria, Derby, Devon,
Dorset, Durham, East Sussex, Essex, Gloucester, Greater London*,
Greater Manchester*, Hampshire, Hereford and Worcester, Hertford,
Humberside, Isle of Wight, Kent, Lancashire, Leicester, Lincoln,
Merseyside*, Norfolk, Northampton, Northumberland, North Yorkshire,
Nottingham, Oxford, Shropshire, Somerset, South Yorkshire*,
Stafford, Suffolk, Surrey, Tyne and Wear*, Warwick, West Midlands*,
West Sussex, West Yorkshire*, Wiltshire; Northern Ireland--26
districts; Antrim, Ards, Armagh, Ballymena, Ballymoney, Banbridge,
Belfast, Carrickfergus, Castlereagh, Coleraine, Cookstown,
Craigavon, Down, Dungannon, Fermanagh, Larne, Limavady, Lisburn,
Londonderry, Magherafelt, Moyle, Newry and Mourne, Newtownabbey,
North Down, Omagh, Strabane; Scotland--9 regions, 3 islands areas*;
Borders, Central, Dumfries and Galloway, Fife, Grampian, Highland,
Lothian, Orkney*, Shetland*, Strathclyde, Tayside, Western Isles*;
Wales--8 counties; Clwyd, Dyfed, Gwent, Gwynedd, Mid Glamorgan,
Powys, South Glamorgan, West Glamorgan
note: England may now have 35 counties and Wales 9 counties

Dependent areas: Anguilla, Bermuda, British Indian Ocean
Territory, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands,
Gibraltar, Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man, Montserrat, Pitcairn
Islands, Saint Helena, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands,
Turks and Caicos Islands

Independence: England has existed as a unified entity since the
10th century; the union between England and Wales was enacted under
the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284; in the Act of Union of 1707,
England and Scotland agreed to permanent union as Great Britain; the
legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland was implemented in
1801, with the adoption of the name the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland; the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 formalized a
partition of Ireland; six northern Irish counties remained part of
the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland and the current name of the
country, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,
was adopted in 1927

National holiday: Celebration of the Birthday of the Queen
(second Saturday in June)

Constitution: unwritten; partly statutes, partly common law and
practice

Legal system: common law tradition with early Roman and modern
conti