Portal:South East England

Portsmouth Harbour, including Spinnaker Tower

Portsmouth (/ˈpɔːrtsməθ/ ^ⓘ PORTS-məth) is a port city and unitary authority in Hampshire, England. Most of Portsmouth is located on Portsea Island, off the south coast of England in the Solent, making Portsmouth the only city in England not located primarily on the mainland. The city is located 22 miles (35 km) south-east of Southampton, 50 miles (80 km) west of Brighton and Hove and 74 miles (119 km) south-west of London. With a population last recorded at 208,100, it is the most densely-populated city in the United Kingdom. Portsmouth forms part of the South Hampshire urban area with Gosport, Fareham, Havant, Eastleigh and Southampton.

Portsmouth's history can be traced to Roman times and has been a significant Royal Navy dockyard and base for centuries. Portsmouth was founded c. 1180 by Anglo-Norman merchant Jean de Gisors in the south-west area of Portsea Island, a location now known as Old Portsmouth. Around this time, de Gisors ordered the construction of a chapel dedicated to St Thomas Becket. This became a parish church by the 14th century. Portsmouth was established as a town with a royal charter on 2 May 1194. The city is home to the first drydock ever built. It was constructed by Henry VII in 1496.

Portsmouth has the world's oldest dry dock, "The Great Stone Dock"; originally built in 1698, rebuilt in 1769 and presently known as "No.5 Dock". The world's first mass production line was established at the naval base's Block Mills which produced pulley blocks for the Royal Navy fleet. By the early-19th century, Portsmouth was the most heavily fortified city in the world, and was considered "the world's greatest naval port" at the height of the British Empire throughout Pax Britannica. By 1859, a ring of defensive land and sea forts, known as the Palmerston Forts, had been built around Portsmouth in anticipation of an invasion from continental Europe.

In the 20th century, Portsmouth achieved city status on 21 April 1926. During the Second World War, the city was a pivotal embarkation point for the D-Day landings and was bombed extensively in the Portsmouth Blitz, which resulted in the deaths of 930 people. In 1982, a large Royal Navy task force departed from Portsmouth for the Falklands War. Her Majesty's Yacht Britannia was formerly based in Portsmouth and oversaw the transfer of Hong Kong in 1997, after which Britannia was retired from royal service, decommissioned and relocated to Leith as a museum ship.

HMNB Portsmouth is an operational Royal Navy base and is home to two-thirds of the UK's surface fleet. The base has long been nicknamed Pompey, a nickname it shares with the wider city of Portsmouth and Portsmouth Football Club. The naval base also contains the National Museum of the Royal Navy and Portsmouth Historic Dockyard; which has a collection of historic warships, including the Mary Rose, Lord Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory (the world's oldest naval ship still in commission), and HMS Warrior, the Royal Navy's first ironclad warship.

The former HMS Vernon shore establishment has been redeveloped into a large retail outlet destination known as Gunwharf Quays which opened in 2001. Portsmouth is among the few British cities with two cathedrals: the Anglican Cathedral of St Thomas and the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St John the Evangelist. The waterfront and Portsmouth Harbour are dominated by the Spinnaker Tower, one of the United Kingdom's tallest structures at 560 feet (170 m).

Southsea is Portsmouth's seaside resort, which was named after Southsea Castle. Southsea has two piers; Clarence Pier amusement park and South Parade Pier. The world's only regular hovercraft service operates from Southsea Hoverport to Ryde on the Isle of Wight. Southsea Common is a large open-air public recreation space which serves as a venue for a wide variety of annual events.

The city has several mainline railway stations that connect to London Victoria and London Waterloo amongst other lines in southern England. Portsmouth International Port is a commercial cruise ship and ferry port for international destinations. The port is the second busiest in the United Kingdom after Dover, handling around three million passengers a year. The city formerly had its own airport, Portsmouth Airport, until its closure in 1973. The University of Portsmouth enrolls 23,000 students.

Portsmouth is the birthplace of notable people such as author Charles Dickens, engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, former Prime Minister James Callaghan, actor Peter Sellers and author-journalist Christopher Hitchens. (Full article...)

Woolf in 1902

Adeline Virginia Woolf (/wʊlf/; née Stephen; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer. She is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors. She pioneered the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.

Woolf was born into an affluent household in South Kensington, London. She was the seventh child of Julia Prinsep Jackson and Leslie Stephen in a blended family of eight that included the modernist painter Vanessa Bell. She was home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature from a young age. From 1897 to 1901, she attended the Ladies' Department of King's College London. There, she studied classics and history, coming into contact with early reformers of women's higher education and the women's rights movement.

After her father's death in 1904, the Stephen family moved from Kensington to the more bohemian Bloomsbury, where, in conjunction with the brothers' intellectual friends, they formed the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group. In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, and in 1917, the couple founded the Hogarth Press, which published much of her work. They rented a home in Sussex and permanently settled there in 1940.

Woolf began writing professionally in 1900. During the inter-war period, Woolf was an important part of London's literary and artistic society, and its anti-war position. In 1915, she published her first novel, The Voyage Out, through her half-brother's publishing house, Gerald Duckworth and Company. Her best-known works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928). She is also known for her essays, such as A Room of One's Own (1929).

Woolf became one of the central subjects of the 1970s movement of feminist criticism. Her works, translated into more than 50 languages, have attracted attention and widespread commentary for inspiring feminism. A large body of writing is dedicated to her life and work. She has been the subject of plays, novels, and films. Woolf is commemorated by statues, societies dedicated to her work, and a building at the University of London. (Full article...)

1981: Portsmouth F.C. and Southampton F.C. footballer Peter Crouch was born.

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