Beautiful England

2012 is a special year, when Great Britain celebrates H.M. The Queen's Diamond Jubilee and hosts the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London.

BeautifulEngland.net displays the beauty and extraordinary range of breathtaking scenery and landscape, which can be found in England and other parts of the United Kingdom. The thousands of photographs are a record of all the places I have been fortunate enough to visit. You may have visited these locations and they will bring back memories, or you can study the photographs and plan your next holiday or day trip. New photographs are continually being added, together with informative notes.

In relation to its size, England has a wider variety of scenery, landscape and visible history, than any other country in the world. William Shakespeare, in Stratford-upon-Avon, could not have realised that when he described his homeland as, 'This precious stone set in the silver sea, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England', that centuries later, visitors from across the world would endorse his description of the beauty of England.

Beautiful England is a land of contrasts. London, described by Daniel Defoe as, 'opulent, enlarged, and still increasing', contains magnificent historic buildings, ranging from the Tower of London and Buckingham Palace, to the London Eye. However, within 200 miles, you can walk all day in the Yorkshire Dales, or on Exmoor, or Dartmoor, without seeing anything larger than a farmhouse.

The River Thames, in its journey to Southend-on-Sea, links the rich history of England. John Burns described 'The Thames' as, 'liquid history'. It starts as a spring in a Cotswold meadow at Thames Head, near Cirencester and flows through Oxford, Windsor Castle and Hampton Court Palace. Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, St. Paul's Cathedral and Greenwich, all stand within a stone's throw of 'Old Father Thames'.

My photographs demonstrate the rich variety of landscape that can be found in England. I am sure that you will agree with Constable, Turner, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Elgar and so many others, that this is truly Beautiful England.