Culture
The United Kingdom and Ireland have separate media, although British television, newspapers and magazines are widely available in Ireland, giving people in Ireland a high level of familiarity with cultural matters in the United Kingdom. Republic of Ireland newspapers and magazines are commonly available in Northern Ireland, and the two main Irish broadsheets, the Irish Times & Irish Independent are frequently available on the British mainland. Certain reality TV shows have embraced the whole of the islands, for example The X Factor, seasons 3, 4 and 7 of which featured auditions in Dublin, were open to Irish voters, whilst the show previously known as Britain's Next Top Model became Britain and Ireland's Next Top Model in 2011.
Ireland and the United Kingdom have agreed a deal on the digital broadcast of BBC Northern Ireland and Channel Four into the Republic of Ireland and of RTÉ and TG4 into Northern Ireland. Tara Television, which broadcast Irish programming into Great Britain, was wound up in 2002. A replacement, under the working title of RTÉ International, has been postponed owing to the financial conditions. Instead, RTÉ player provides a subset of programming for audiences outside of Ireland.
Some cultural events are organised for the island group as a whole. For example, the Costa Book Awards are awarded to authors resident in the UK or Ireland. The Man Booker Prize is awarded to authors from the Commonwealth of Nations and Ireland. The Mercury Music Prize is handed out every year to the best album from a British or Irish musician or group.
The British and Irish Lions is a team made up of players from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales that undertakes tours of the southern hemisphere rugby playing nations every four years. The Ryder Cup in golf was originally played between a United States team and a team representing Great Britain and Ireland. From 1979 onwards this was expanded to include the whole of Europe.
In 2012, the Olympic torch visited Dublin on a tour of the UK ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Dublin was the only place outside of the UK (apart from the traditional lighting ceremony in Greece) that the torch will visit. UK Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, Jeremy Hunt, said: "The Republic of Ireland is the only country outside the UK to be visited by the torch and rightly so, given the unique and deep ties between Ireland and the UK."
Many of the countries and regions of the isles, especially Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Isle of Man, and Scotland share a common Celtic heritage, and all of these countries have branches of the Celtic league.
Read more about this topic: Ireland–United Kingdom Relations
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men,—those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The purpose of education is to keep a culture from being drowned in senseless repetitions, each of which claims to offer a new insight.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)