Our land has been settled for over 5000 years. The British Isles were settled on the west coast between 3000 and 2000 BC by short, fairhaired Iberians. From 700 BC Britain was settled on the east coast by tall fair-haired Celts: the Gaels, Brythons, and Belgae. Britain was colonised by the Romans from 43 to 410 AD, but their advanced culture was not absorbed by the 'Romano-Britons'. Following the departure of the Romans, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes sailed across the North Sea from Jutland and Northern Germany, pushing the Celts into the highlands of what are now Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland, so creating the racial distinctions between the regions of Britain.

The name England is derived from the Angles, who originated in a territory called Angeln, which was in Jutland near the present border between Denmark and Germany. The 'Anglo-Saxons', under Alfred the Great's House of Wessex, conquered and absorbed the next arrivals, the Vikings.

This established for the first time in 927 AD a united nation of England, roughly with its present borders.
We were colonised by Denmark under Canute between 1016 and 1042, and by the Duke of Normandy in 1066. We achieved full and final self-government as the Normandy kings transferred their loyalty across the English Channel to England, losing their territories in France in 1204. The Norman conquest had the effect of linking us to Latin southern Europe, in addition to our connection with Nordic northern Europe.

We annexed Wales in 1284, and she was fully integrated with England in 1536. The King of Scotland, James VI, was made our James I in 1603, and it was he who invented the name "Great Britain". After the 'English Revolution' and under Cromwell we became "the Commonwealth of England, without a King or House of Lords". In 1707 the English and Scottish parliaments agreed to a political union, the "United Kingdom of Great Britain". In 1801 the English and Irish parliaments agreed to Ireland's joining this union. In creating this union with Scotland and Ireland we ensured that Scotland remained another Protestant part of Britain, and that Napoleon could not invade us through Ireland.

In 1920 two subordinate parliaments were established in Ireland, one in the Catholic south, and one in the mainly Protestant north. In 1922, following an armed uprising in the south, Eire became independent, and we became the present "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".

Our world territorial acquisitions led to the creation of the British Empire 'on which the sun never set'. However, in time each colonial territory demanded and fought for independence. Since the end of the Second World War we have shrunk from being the world's largest empire to being the present disunited United Kingdom, with the process of its fragmentation continuing at the present time.