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Robert Fisk

Robert William Fisk (12 July 1946 –30 October 2020) was an English writer and journalist. He was critical of United States foreign policy in the Middle East, and the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians.

As an international correspondent, he covered the civil wars in Lebanon, Algeria, and Syria, the Iran–Iraq conflict, the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Islamic revolution in Iran, Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, and the U.S. invasion, and occupation of Iraq. An Arabic speaker, he was among the few Western journalists to interview Osama bin Laden, which he did three times between 1993 and 1997.

He began his journalistic career at the Newcastle Chronicle and then the Sunday Express. From there, he went to work for The Times as a correspondent in Northern Ireland, Portugal and the Middle East; in the last role, he based himself in Beirut intermittently from 1976. After 1989, he worked for The Independent. Fisk received many British and international journalism awards, including the Press Awards Foreign Reporter of the Year seven times.

Books by Fisk include The Point of No Return (1975), In Time of War (1985), Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (1990), The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (2005), and Syria: Descent Into the Abyss (2015).

The term fisking (meaning a line-by-line rebuttal) was coined to describe his method.

Early life and education
Fisk was an only child, born in Maidstone, Kent, to William and Peggy Fisk. His father was Borough Treasurer at Maidstone Corporation and had fought in the First World War. His mother was an amateur painter who in later years became a Maidstone magistrate. At the end of the war Bill Fisk was punished for disobeying an order to execute another soldier; his son said, "My father's refusal to kill another man was the only thing he did in his life which I would also have done." Though his father said little about his part in the war, it held a fascination for his son. After his father's death, he discovered that he had been the scribe of his battalion's war diaries from August 1918.

Fisk was educated at Yardley Court, a preparatory school, then at Sutton Valence School and Lancaster University, where he undertook his B.A. in Latin and Linguistics and contributed to the student magazine John O'Gauntlet. He gained a PhD in political science from Trinity College Dublin in 1983; the title of his doctoral thesis was "A Condition of Limited Warfare: Éire's Neutrality and the Relationship between Dublin, Belfast and London, 1939–1945". It was published as In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality 1939-1945 (London: André Deutsch, 1983; reprinted in Dublin by Gill & MacMillan, 1996). Reviewer F. I. Magee in 1984 stated: "This book presents a detailed and definitive account of Anglo-Irish relations during the Second World War....Fisk's excellent book highlights the ambivalence in relations between Britain, the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland and goes a long way towards explaining why the current situation is so intractable."

Newspaper correspondent
Fisk worked on the Sunday Express diary column before a disagreement with the editor, John Junor, prompted a move to The Times. From 1972 to 1975, at the height of the Troubles, Fisk was The Times' Belfast correspondent, before being posted to Portugal following the Carnation Revolution in 1974. He then was appointed Middle East correspondent (1976–1987). In addition to the Troubles and Portugal, he reported the Iranian revolution in 1979. When a story of his on Iran Air Flight 655 was spiked shortly after the paper's takeover by Rupert Murdoch, Fisk moved to The Independent in 1989. The New York Times described Fisk as "probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain". The Economist referred to him as "one of the most influential correspondents in the Middle East since the second world war."

War reporting
Fisk lived in Beirut from 1976, remaining throughout the Lebanese Civil War. He was one of the first Western journalists to report on the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon, as well as the Hama Massacre in Syria. His book on the Lebanese conflict, Pity the Nation, was published in 1990.

Fisk also reported on the Soviet–Afghan War, the Iran–Iraq War, the Arab–Israeli conflict, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the Algerian Civil War, the Bosnian War, the 2001 international intervention in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Arab Spring in 2011 and the ongoing Syrian Civil War. During the Iran–Iraq War, he suffered partial but permanent hearing loss as a result of being close to Iraqi heavy artillery in the Shatt-al-Arab when covering the early stages of the conflict.

After the United States and allies launched their intervention in Afghanistan, Fisk was for a time transferred to Pakistan to cover the conflict. While reporting from there, he was attacked and beaten by a group of Afghan refugees fleeing heavy bombing by the United States Air Force. In his graphic account of his almost being beaten to death until a local Muslim leader intervened, Fisk absolved the attackers of responsibility and pointed out that their "brutality was entirely the product of others, of us—of we who had armed their struggle against the Russians and ignored their pain and laughed at their civil war and then armed and paid them again for the 'War for Civilisation' just a few miles away and then bombed their homes and ripped up their families and called them 'collateral damage'." According to Richard Falk, Fisk said of his attacker: "There is every reason to be angry. I've been an outspoken critic of the US actions myself. If I had been them, I would have attacked me."

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Fisk was based in Baghdad and filed many eyewitness reports. He criticised other journalists based in Iraq for what he calls their "hotel journalism": reporting from one's hotel room without interviews or first-hand experience of events. Fisk's criticism of the invasion was rejected by some other journalists. Fisk criticised the Coalition's handling of the sectarian violence in post-invasion Iraq and argued that the official narrative of sectarian conflict is not possible: "The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war? Now the Americans will say it's Al Qaeda, it's the Sunni insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militiamen who make up the death squads? We do, the occupation authorities. ... We need to look at this story in a different light."

Osama bin Laden
Fisk interviewed Osama bin Laden on three occasions. The interviews appeared in articles published by The Independent on 6 December 1993, 10 July 1996, and 22 March 1997. In Fisk's first interview, "Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace", he wrote of Osama bin Laden, then overseeing the construction of a highway in Sudan: "With his high cheekbones, narrow eyes and long brown robe, Mr Bin Laden looks every inch the mountain warrior of mujahedin legend. Chadored children danced in front of him, preachers acknowledged his wisdom" while observing that he was accused of "training for further jihad wars".

During one of Fisk's interviews with bin Laden, Fisk noted an attempt by bin Laden to convert him. Bin Laden said: "Mr Robert, one of our brothers had a dream ... that you were a spiritual person ... this means you are a true Muslim". Fisk replied: "Sheikh Osama, I am not a Muslim. ... I am a journalist [whose] task is to tell the truth." Bin Laden replied: "If you tell the truth, that means you are a good Muslim." During the 1996 interview, bin Laden said the Saudi royal family was corrupt. During the final interview in 1997, bin Laden said he sought God's help "to turn America into a shadow of itself".

Fisk strongly condemned the September 11 attacks, describing them as a "hideous crime against humanity". He also denounced the Bush administration's response to the attacks, arguing that "a score of nations" were being identified and positioned as "haters of democracy" or "kernels of evil", and urged a more honest debate on U.S. policy in the Middle East. He argued that such a debate had hitherto been avoided "because, of course, to look too closely at the Middle East would raise disturbing questions about the region, about our Western policies in those tragic lands, and about America's relationship with Israel".

In 2007, Fisk expressed personal doubts about the official historical record of the attacks. In an article for The Independent, he wrote that, while the Bush administration was incapable of successfully carrying out such attacks due to its organisational incompetence, he was "increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11" and added that he did not condone the "crazed 'research' of David Icke", but was "talking about scientific issues". Fisk had earlier addressed similar concerns in a speech at Sydney University in 2006. During the speech, Fisk said: "Partly I think because of the culture of secrecy of the White House, never have we had a White House so secret as this one. Partly because of this culture, I think suspicions are growing in the United States, not just among Berkeley guys with flowers in their hair. ... But there are a lot of things we don't know, a lot of things we're not going to be told. ... Perhaps the [fourth] plane was hit by a missile, we still don't know".

Bill Durodié noted that at one point Osama bin Laden had advised the White House to "read Robert Fisk, rather than, as one might have supposed, the Koran."

Syrian Civil War
Reporting from Douma, in April 2018 on the Douma chemical attack, Fisk quoted a Syrian doctor who attributed the victims' breathing problems not to gas but to dust and lack of oxygen after heavy shelling by government forces. Other people he spoke to doubted a gas attack, and Fisk queried the incident. Fisk's reporting drew criticism for having relied on government supplied contacts, with Asser Khattab writing in Raseef22 that the doctor quoted by Fisk "had been introduced to him by officials in the Syrian government and army". Richard Spencer and Catherine Philp in The Times wrote that journalists had been taken to Douma on a government-organised trip while international investigators were forced to remain in Damascus, and that the doctor interviewed by Fisk admitted to not having been to the hospital where the victims were taken. The Snopes website said other reporters on the same trip as Fisk had interviewed locals who said they had inhaled toxic gas.

Fisk returned to the subject of the Douma attacks in early January 2020, in an article concerning internal disagreements within the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) recorded in documents released by WikiLeaks.

Media appearances
He was interviewed by Kirsty Young for Desert Island Discs in 2006. His final selections were Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber, Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory, and a violin.

Fisk featured in the 2016 documentary film notes to eternity by New Zealand filmmaker Sarah Cordery, along with Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and Sara Roy. The film explores their lives and work in relation to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Fisk was profiled in Yung Chang's 2019 documentary film This Is Not a Movie. In reviewing the film, Slant Magazine stated: "The two things that give this documentary its power and provocativeness are intellectual rather than dramatic: Fisk’s work, and his ideas." Cath Clarke, writing for The Guardian, said the film asks its audience about war: "Is there something deep in our souls that permits it because it feels natural? His painful, deeply serious question about the inevitability of war sets the tone of this documentary about his career."

Stances and reception
Fisk was known for his criticism of the foreign policy of the United States, particularly the country's involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East. He was consistently critical of Israel, labelling some of the country's actions against Palestinians as "war crimes". One of his beliefs was that he should report events from the point of view of the victim rather than those in authority. The Times newspaper, in its November 2020 obituary of Fisk, said that he had developed a "visceral dislike of the Israeli government and its allies" following his coverage of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, alleging that this had made Fisk biased and "unable to provide a dispassionate account of events and their context". David Pryce-Jones, writing in The Spectator in 2003, said that Fisk was guilty of "hysteria and distortion" in his coverage of Middle Eastern topics. In contrast, The Independent, for whom he wrote from 1989, praised him as being "renowned for his courage in questioning official narratives from governments".

The BBC's Jeremy Bowen also praised him following his death, and noted the controversy Fisk drew for his "sharp criticism of the US and Israel, and of Western foreign policy". Bowen described himself as an admirer who would miss Fisk's "guts and his appetite for the fight". Fisk dismissed the controversy related to his reporting in Syria, saying that he was "writing only what he saw and heard". His ex-wife, Lara Marlowe, took exception to the use of the adjective "controversial" in his obituaries, saying "he was a prolific non-conformist in the world of journalism, whose judgments avoided jumping on the bandwagon" and, in her experience, had been "intuitive, rapid [...] and invariably right".

Similarly, the foreign correspondent for The Independent Patrick Cockburn, responding to criticisms raised in obituaries, said "Derring-do in times of war usually gets good notices from the press and from public opinion, but moral endurance is a much rarer commodity, when the plaudits are replaced by abuse, often from people who see a world divided between devils and angels and denounce anybody reporting less than angelic behaviour on the part of the latter for being secret sympathisers with the devil." Cockburn wrote that Fisk was better than anyone at "find[ing] out significant news as fast as possible, disregard[ing] all efforts by governments, armies and media to suppress it, and pass[ing] that information on to the public so they can better judge what is happening in the world around them".

On journalism and politics
Fisk described himself as a pacifist and non-voter. He said that journalism must "challenge authority, all authority, especially so when governments and politicians take us to war". He quoted, with approval, the words of Israeli journalist Amira Hass: "There is a misconception that journalists can be objective. ... What journalism is really about is to monitor power and the centres of power." In light of his earlier training as a journalist on the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, he said "I had a suspicion that the language we were forced to write as trainee reporters all those years ago had somehow imprisoned us, that we had been schooled to mould the world and ourselves in clichés, that for the most part this would define our lives, destroy our anger and imagination, make us loyal to our betters, to governments, to authority. For some reason, I had become possessed of the belief that the blame for our failure as journalists to report the Middle East with any sense of moral passion or indignation lay in the way that we as journalists were trained." In an interview with the BBC in 2005, he articulated this position further: "If you believe that victims should have more of a say than people who commit atrocities, then yes, I take a definite position. If reporters don't do that then they are out of their minds."

On coverage of foreign reporting, he observed in an interview with Harry Kreisler at the Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley in 2006: "the French are very good at getting to the scene and reporting the reality. I know France doesn't have a very clean reputation in American politics at the moment but my goodness, they've got good journalists. You read a translation of Liberacion [sic], Figero  [sic], Le Monde – they've got it. I work a lot with French – I normally work on my own, but if I work with other reporters, I tend to report with Italians or the French because, my goodness, they get to the war front."

When he spoke on "Lies, Misreporting, and Catastrophe in the Middle East" at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley on 22 September 2010, he stated: "I think it is the duty of a foreign correspondent to be neutral and unbiased on the side of those who suffer, whoever they may be." He wrote at length on how many contemporary conflicts had their origins, in his view, in lines drawn on maps: "After the Allied victory of 1918, at the end of my father's war, the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies. In the space of just seventeen months, they created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East. And I have spent my entire career—in Belfast and Sarajevo, in Beirut and Baghdad—watching the people within those borders burn."

Armenian genocide
Fisk wrote extensively about the Armenian genocide of 1915 and supported moves to persuade the Turkish Government to acknowledge it.

Remembrance Day
For Remembrance Day in 2011, Fisk wrote that his father "old Bill Fisk became very ruminative about the Great War. He learned that Haig had lied, that he himself had fought for a world that betrayed him, that 20,000 British dead on the first day of the Somme – which he mercifully avoided because his first regiment, the Cheshires, sent him to Dublin and Cork to deal with another 1916 "problem" – was a trashing of human life. In hospital and recovering from cancer, I asked him once why the Great War was fought. 'All I can tell you, fellah,' he said, 'was that it was a great waste.' And he swept his hand from left to right. Then he stopped wearing his poppy. I asked him why, and he said that he didn't want to see 'so many damn fools' wearing it." He returned to the subject in 2014, the standfirst summarised his experience "My family was haunted by my father's experience on the Somme and the loss of his friends. Why do we pay homage to the dead but ignore the lessons of their war?" and in 2016 where he said "His example was one of great courage. He fought for his country and then, unafraid, he threw his poppy away. Television celebrities do not have to fight for their country – yet they do not even have the guts to break this fake conformity and toss their sordid poppies in the office waste paper bin."

Personal life
Fisk married American-born journalist Lara Marlowe in 1994. The couple did not have any children and divorced in 2006. At the time of his death, he was married to Nelofer Pazira, an Afghan-Canadian journalist, author and human rights activist.

On settling down, he wrote in 2005: "I told the journalism students there [at City, University of London] that when I saw families walking happily in London or Paris, I wondered whether I had not missed out on life, that perhaps comparative safety and security with nothing more than the mortgage to worry about was preferable to the existence I had chosen for myself. A friend of my father's once said I had enjoyed the privilege of seeing things that no other man had seen. But after a flood of questions from students in Sydney about suffering in the Middle East, I began to wonder if my privilege had not also been my curse."

Death
On 30 October 2020, Fisk died aged 74 at St. Vincent's University Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, after a suspected stroke. Due to the Irish Government COVID-19 restrictions, his funeral was held privately.

The president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins said "with his passing the world of journalism and informed commentary on the Middle East has lost one of its finest commentators" and the Taoiseach Micheál Martin stated that "he was fearless and independent in his reporting, with a deeply researched understanding of the complexities of the Middle East, eastern history and politics".

The Australian anti-war journalist John Pilger declared upon hearing of his death that "Robert Fisk has died. I pay warmest tribute to one of the last great reporters. The weasel word 'controversial' appears in even his own paper, The Independent, whose pages he honoured. He went against the grain and told the truth, spectacularly. Journalism has lost the bravest." Former Leader of the UK Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn eulogised him on Twitter, finding it "[s]o sad to hear of the death of Robert Fisk. A huge loss of a brilliant man with unparalleled knowledge of history, politics and people of Middle East." The Greek politician and economic theorist Yanis Varoufakis also posted a eulogy on Twitter, declaring that "[w]ith Robert Fisk's passing we have lost a journalistic eye without which we shall be partially blind, a pen without which our capacity to express the truth is diminished, a soul without which our own empathy for victims of imperialism will be lacking."

Christian Broughton, the managing director of The Independent, said "Fearless, uncompromising, determined and utterly committed to uncovering the truth and reality at all costs, Robert Fisk was the greatest journalist of his generation. The fire he lit at The Independent will burn on." For Harry Browne in Jacobin: "Robert Fisk's voice was everywhere, and his ideas were vital in both creating and meeting that Irish urge for explanation." The Irish Times obituary read: "He used to explain his rejection of conventional journalistic detachment by saying: 'If you watch wars, the old ideas of journalism that you have to be neutral and take nobody's side is rubbish. As a journalist, you have got to be neutral and unbiased on the side of those who suffer." Former Chartered Institute of Journalists president Liz Justice wrote: "I knew him as a very detailed and knowledgeable journalist. My friend had to edit his work from 2,000 words to 400 and we have very different views involving eggshells and walking carefully. We both agree he will be missed." Richard Falk, in an interview with CounterPunch, said: "Fisk's departure from the region left a journalistic gap that has not been filled. It is important to appreciate that there are few war correspondents in the world that combine Fisk's reporting fearlessness with his interpretative depth, engaging writing style, and candid exposures of the foibles of the high and mighty."

Memoir
Love in a Time of War, a memoir by Fisk's first wife, Lara Marlowe, was published in 2021. It covers the period from 1988 to 2003, the period Fisk and Marlowe worked together.

Awards, honours and degrees
Fisk received the British Press Awards' International Journalist of the Year seven times, and twice won its "Reporter of the Year" award. He also received Amnesty International UK Media Awards in 1992 for his report "The Other Side of the Hostage Saga", in 1998 for his reports from Algeria and again in 2000 for his articles on the NATO air campaign against the FRY in 1999.

 * 1984 Lancaster University honorary degree
 * 1991 Jacob's Award for coverage of the Gulf War on RTÉ Radio 1
 * 1994 Foreign Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards for coverage on Algeria, the Hebron massacre, and Bosnia
 * 1995 Foreign Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards
 * 1999 Orwell Prize for journalism
 * 2001 David Watt Prize for an investigation of the 1915 Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire
 * 2002 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism
 * 2003 Open University honorary doctorate
 * 2004 University of St Andrews honorary degree
 * 2004 Carleton University honorary degree
 * 2005 University of Adelaide Edward Said Memorial lecture
 * 2006 Ghent University honorary degree Political and Social Sciences
 * 2006 American University of Beirut honorary degree
 * 2006 Queen's University Belfast honorary degree
 * 2006 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize worth $350,000
 * 2008 University of Kent honorary degree
 * 2008 Trinity College Dublin honorary doctorate
 * 2009 College Historical Society's Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Public Discourse
 * 2009 Liverpool Hope University honorary degree
 * 2011 International Prize at the Amalfi Coast Media Awards, Italy

Books
His 2005 work, The Great War for Civilisation, was critical of Western and Israeli approaches to the Middle East. Neal Ascherson, for The Independent on Sunday commented: "This is a very long book, allowing Fisk to interleave political analysis, recent history and his own adventures with the real stories which concern him. These are the sufferings of ordinary people under monstrous tyrannies or in criminal, avoidable wars". In The Guardian, a former British Ambassador to Libya, Oliver Miles, complained of "a deplorable number of mistakes" in the book's 1,366 pages which "undermine the reader's confidence", and that "vigilant editing and ruthless pruning could perhaps have made two or three good short books out of this one". Richard Beeston, a longtime foreign correspondent and then foreign editor for The Times, wrote in a review of the book that Fisk's "central argument is lost in a verbal avalanche, as Fisk empties 30 years of notebooks onto the page" and that while there are what he calls "passages of descriptive brilliance" he regarded some of his arguments "ridiculous" and "utter nonsense".

Other books

 * The Point of No Return: The Strike Which Broke the British in Ulster (1975). London: Times Books/Deutsch. ISBN 0-233-96682-X
 * In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality, 1939–1945 (2001). London: Gill & Macmillan. ISBN 0-7171-2411-8 (1st ed. 1983).
 * Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (3rd ed. 2001). London: Oxford University Press; xxi, 727 pages. ISBN 0-19-280130-9 (1st ed. was 1990).
 * The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (October 2005) London. Fourth Estate; xxvi, 1366 pages. ISBN 1-84115-007-X
 * The Age of the Warrior: Selected Writings (2008) London, Fourth Estate ISBN 978-0-00-727073-6
 * Robert Fisk on Algeria: Why Algeria's Tragedy Matters (2013) Independent Print Limited ISBN 9781633533677

Video documentary
Fisk produced a three-part series titled From Beirut To Bosnia in 1993 which Fisk said was an attempt "to find out why an increasing number of Muslims had come to hate the West". Fisk said that the Discovery Channel did not show a repeat of the films, after initially showing them in full, due to a letter campaign launched by pro-Israel groups such as CAMERA.

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Sketch comedy

Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is used widely in variety shows, comedy talk shows, and some sitcoms and children's television series. The sketches may be improvised live by the performers, developed through improvisation before public performance, or scripted and rehearsed in advance like a play. Sketch comedians routinely differentiate their work from a "skit", maintaining that a skit is a (single) dramatized joke (or "bit") while a sketch is a comedic exploration of a concept, character, or situation. Sketch comedy is a genre within American television that includes a multitude of schemes and identities.

History
Sketch comedy has its origins in vaudeville and music hall, where many brief humorous acts were strung together to form a larger programme.

In Britain, it moved to stage performances by Cambridge Footlights, such as Beyond the Fringe and A Clump of Plinths (which evolved into Cambridge Circus), to radio, with such shows as It's That Man Again and I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, then to television, with such shows as Not Only... But Also, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Not the Nine O'Clock News (and its successor Alas Smith and Jones), and A Bit of Fry and Laurie.

An early, perhaps the first, televised example of a sketch comedy show is Texaco Star Theater aka The Milton Berle Show 1948–1967, hosted by Milton Berle. In Mexico, the series Los Supergenios de la Mesa Cuadrada, created by Mexican comedian Roberto Gómez Bolaños under the stage name Chespirito, was broadcast between 1968 and 1973, creating such famous characters as El Chavo del Ocho and El Chapulín Colorado.

While separate sketches historically have tended to be unrelated, more recent groups have introduced overarching themes that connect the sketches within a particular show with recurring characters that return for more than one appearance. Examples of recurring characters include Mr. Gumby from Monty Python's Flying Circus; Ted and Ralph from The Fast Show; The Family from The Carol Burnett Show; the Head Crusher from The Kids in the Hall; Martin Short's Ed Grimley, a recurring character from both SCTV and Saturday Night Live; The Nerd from Robot Chicken; and Kevin and Perry from Harry Enfield and Chums. Recurring characters from Saturday Night Live have notably been featured in a number of spinoff films, including The Blues Brothers (1980), Wayne's World (1992) and Superstar (1999).

The idea of running characters was taken a step further with shows like The Red Green Show and The League of Gentlemen, where sketches centered on the various inhabitants of the fictional towns of Possum Lake and Royston Vasey, respectively. In Little Britain, sketches focused on a cast of recurring characters.

In North America, contemporary sketch comedy is largely an outgrowth of the improvisational comedy scene that flourished during the 1970s, largely growing out of The Second City in Chicago and Toronto, which was built upon the success in Minneapolis of The Brave New Workshop and Dudley Riggs.

Notable contemporary American stage sketch comedy groups include The Second City, the Upright Citizens Brigade, and The Groundlings. In South Bend, Indiana, area high school students produced a sketch comedy series called Beyond Our Control that aired on the local NBC affiliate WNDU-TV from 1967 to 1986. Warner Bros. Animation made two sketch comedy shows, Mad and Right Now Kapow.

Australian television of the '80s and '90s featured several successful sketch comedy shows, notably The Comedy Company, whose recurring characters included Col'n Carpenter, Kylie Mole and Con the Fruiterer.

Films
An early British example is the influential The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959). Sketch films made during the 1970s and 1980s include If You Don't Stop It... You'll Go Blind and the sequel Can I Do It... 'Til I Need Glasses?, The Groove Tube, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), The Kentucky Fried Movie and its sequel Amazon Women on the Moon, and Monty Python's And Now for Something Completely Different and The Meaning of Life.

More recent sketch films include The Underground Comedy Movie, InAPPropriate Comedy, Movie 43 and Livrés chez vous sans contact.

Festivals
Many of the sketch comedy revues in Britain included seasons at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Since 1999, the growing sketch comedy scene has precipitated the development of sketch comedy festivals in cities all around North America. Noted festivals include:
 * Chicago Sketch Fest
 * SF Sketchfest
 * Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Sketch comedy


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Shropshire

Shropshire (historically Salop and abbreviated Shrops) is a ceremonial county in the West Midlands of England, on the Welsh border. It is bordered by Wrexham County Borough and Cheshire to the north, Staffordshire to the east, Worcestershire to the south-east, Herefordshire to the south and Powys to the west. The largest settlement is Telford, and Shrewsbury is the county town.

The county has an area of 3487 km2 and a population of 498,073. Telford (155,570), in the east of the county, and Shrewsbury (76,782), in the centre, are the only large towns. Shropshire is otherwise rural, containing market towns such as Oswestry (15,613), Bridgnorth (12,212) and Newport (11,387). For local government purposes the county comprises two unitary authority areas: Shropshire, and Telford and Wrekin.

Shropshire is generally flat in the north and hilly in the south. The Shropshire Hills AONB covers about a quarter of the county, including the Wrekin, Clee Hills, Stiperstones, the Long Mynd, and Wenlock Edge. Part of the Fenn's, Whixall and Bettisfield Mosses National Nature Reserve, which extends into Wales, occupies the low-lying north west of the county. The county's major river is the Severn, which enters from the west and forms a wide, flat valley before exiting into Worcestershire south of Bridgnorth. The village of Edgmond, near Newport, is the location of the lowest recorded temperature in England and Wales.

There is evidence of Neolithic and Bronze Age human occupation in Shropshire, including the Shropshire bulla pendant. The hillfort at Old Oswestry dates from the Iron Age, and the remains of the city of Viroconium Cornoviorum date from the Roman period. During the Anglo-Saxon era the area was part of Mercia. During the High Middle Ages the county was part of the Welsh Marches, the border region between Wales and England; from 1472 to 1689 Ludlow was the seat of the Council of Wales and the Marches, which administered justice in Wales and Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. During the English Civil War Shropshire was Royalist, and Charles II fled through the county—famously hiding in an oak tree—after his final defeat at the Battle of Worcester. The area around Coalbrookdale is regarded as one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution and has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Prehistory and antiquity
Evidence of Neolithic occupation of a religious form dating back before 2,000 BC, was discovered in 2017 in the grounds of a church, the medieval Church of the Holy Fathers in Sutton, Shrewsbury, making it Britain's oldest place of worship.

The Shropshire bulla ("bulla" is Medieval Latin for "a round seal", Classical Latin for "bubble, blob", plural bullae), also known as the Shropshire sun pendant, is a Late Bronze Age gold pendant found by a metal detectorist in 2018 in Shropshire. At Mitchel's Fold there is a Bronze Age stone circle set in dramatic moorland on Stapeley Hill.

The area was once part of the lands of the Cornovii, which consisted of the modern day counties of Cheshire, Shropshire, north Staffordshire, north Herefordshire, and eastern parts of Powys. This was a tribal Celtic Iron Age kingdom. Their capital in pre-Roman times was probably a hill fort on the Wrekin. There is an important Iron Age Hill fort at Old Oswestry earthworks, this has been linked to where King Arthur’s Guinevere was born and called "the Stonehenge of the Iron Age."

According to tradition, Caracticus made his last stand against the Romans in Shropshire. Ptolemy's 2nd century Geography names one of their towns as being Viroconium Cornoviorum (Wroxeter), which became their capital under Roman rule and one of the largest settlements in Britain.

Early period
After the Roman occupation of Britain ended in the 5th century, the Shropshire area was in the eastern part of the Welsh Kingdom of Powys; known in Welsh poetry as the Paradise of Powys.

As 'Caer Guricon' it is a possible Shrewsbury was the site of the seat of the Kingdom of Powys in the Early Middle Ages. This would date establishment of the town to the 500s CE under Brochwel Ysgithrog. It is believed the area of Shrewsbury was settled in the 5th century by refugees from the nearby Roman City of Viroconium Cornoviorum, most physical evidence dates from the 7th century.

Oswestry saw conflict in the early mediaeval period and is reputed to be the place of death of Oswald of Northumbria in 641 or 642 CE. Oswald was later regarded as a saint, with Bede saying that the spot where he died came to be associated with miracles, and people took dirt from the site, which led to a hole being dug as deep as a man's height.

King Offa of Mercia annexed the entirety of Shropshire over the course of the 8th century from Powys, with Shrewsbury captured in 778, with two dykes built to defend, or at least demarcate it from the Welsh. King Offa converted the palace of the rulers of Powys into his first church, dedicated to St Chad (a foundation that still survives in the town and operated on that initial site for over 1000 years, moving in 1792).

In later centuries, Vikings repeatedly invaded and fortresses were built at Bridgnorth (912) and Chirbury (913).

In 914,  Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, fortified Shrewsbury, along with two other fortresses, at Scergeat (a currently unknown location) and Weardbyrig, Viking rides from the north traveling south were reaching Bridgnorth at this time (910CE). In the early tenth century, the relics of St Alkmund were translated to Whitchurch, this was also probably the work of Æthelflæd.

There is evidence to show that by the beginning of the 900s, Shrewsbury was home to a mint.

Archaeological excavations at the site of Shrewsbury castle in 2019 have indicated that the castle itself may have been a fortified site in the time of the Saxons.

High medieval period
After the Norman conquest in 1066, major estates in Shropshire were granted to Normans, including Roger de Montgomerie and later his son Robert de Bellême, who ordered significant constructions, particularly in Shrewsbury, the town of which he was Earl.

Many defensive castles were built at this time across the county to defend against the Welsh and enable effective control of the region, including Ludlow Castle and Shrewsbury Castle.

The western frontier with Wales was not finally determined until the 14th century. Also in this period, a number of religious foundations were formed, the county largely falling at this time under the Diocese of Hereford and that of Coventry and Lichfield. Some parishes in the north-west of the county in later times fell under the Diocese of St. Asaph until the disestablishment of the Church in Wales in 1920, when they were ceded to the Lichfield diocese.

The county was a central part of the Welsh Marches during the medieval period and was often embroiled in the power struggles between powerful Marcher Lords, the Earls of March and successive monarchs.

Modern history

From 1457, King Henry VI created for his son, Prince Edward, a Council to rule Wales and the Marches, Cheshire, and Cornwall, which became the Council of the Marches. Shropshire was governed via this council for several centuries.

According to historian John Davies, at its peak under Sir Henry Sidney and for a period thereafter the Council:

"represented a remarkable experiment in regional government. It administered the law cheaply and rapidly; it dealt with up to twenty cases a day and George Owen stated that the 'oppressed poor' flocked to it."

Civil War
During the English Civil War, Shropshire was a Royalist stronghold, under the command of Sir Francis Ottley. In the autumn of 1642, Charles I had a temporary capital at Shrewsbury, though he immediately moved to Oxford after the events of the Battle of Wem. Prince Rupert established his headquarters in the town on 18 February 1644, being welcomed by Shrewsbury's aldermen.

Victorian era
Much Wenlock was the birthplace of the modern Olympic movement.

Literature and legends
In the High Medieval period the Shropshire area influenced important poetry: the poet William Langland, writer of Piers Plowman, was born in Cleobury Mortimer, and the 14th-century alliterative poem St Erkenwald is written in a local dialect. The only copy of the ancient poem 'Life and Death' was also found in Shropshire.

In this period the county was also associated in divers places and ways with Arthurian legends, for instance at Hawkstone, where there is a legend that one of the caves of Hawkstone Park was the burial ground of King Arthur, and the Arthurian story of the giants Tarquin and Tarquinus is located, or Whittington Castle and linked to the Holy Grail since the 13th century. Old Oswestry has been identified as a possible home of Guinevere. Ludlow Castle site features heavily in the folk-story of Fulk FitzWarin, outlawed Lord of Whittington, Shropshire and a possible inspiration for the Robin Hood legend.

Parts of Shropshire are inside the ancient Forest of Arden, which was the part if the English Midlands, that in antiquity and into the Early Modern Period was bounded by the Roman roads including to the North by the Watling Street and to the west by Wales. This forest was the Setting of Shakespeare's As You Like It, and that play is acknowledged to potentially be a cultural monument to Sir Rowland Hill, a prominent Tudor statesman and publisher of the Geneva Bible from the county.

Shropshire was the original seat of prominence of the Cotton family who held the Cotton Library before it was taken to found the British Library.

Shrewsbury Abbey features in The Cadfael Chronicles; Brother Cadfael is a member of the community at the Abbey.

The poet A. E. Housman used Shropshire as the setting for many of the poems in his first book, A Shropshire Lad. Moreover, many of Malcolm Saville's children's books are set in Shropshire. Additionally, D. H. Lawrence's novella, St. Mawr, is partially set in the Stiperstones area of South Shropshire.

The early 20th century novelist and poet Mary Webb was born in Shropshire and lived most of her life there, and all her novels are set there, most notably Precious Bane, with its powerful evocation of the Shropshire countryside. A school in Pontesbury bears her name.

Shropshire is widely believed to have been an influence for J. R. R. Tolkien's landscape of the Shire in The Lord of the Rings. Specifically, the Wrekin (as The Lonely Mountain) and Ellesmere (as Laketown) are said to have inspired the English fantasy writer.

In Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), Jonathan Strange is from the county, and some parts of the book are set there. Another fictional character from Shropshire is Mr Grindley, from Charles Dickens' Bleak House.

P. G. Wodehouse's fictional Blandings Castle, the ancestral home of Lord Emsworth, is located in Shropshire. Also from Shropshire is Psmith, a fictional character in a series of Wodehouse's novels.

In Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon attempts to trick Jack into revealing the location of his country home by inferring he resides in Shropshire.

The 1856 plantation literature novel White Acre vs. Black Acre by William M. Burwell features two Shropshire farms acting as an allegory for American slavery – "White Acre Farm" being the abolitionist Northern United States, and "Black Acre Farm" being the slaveholding Southern United States.

The angel Aziraphale, a principal character in Good Omens, was credited with designing Shropshire by Terry Pratchett.

In the novel Howards End, Mr. Wilcox's daughter gets married in Shropshire. Part of the novel is set near Clun.

Theology
Shropshire was the native county and rural seat of power of Sir Rowland Hill, who coordinated and published the 1560 Geneva Bible. This important Bible was the senior Bible of English Protestantism for the early decades of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement.

Drama

Prior to the Reformation, there are accounts of major festivals in the county. The "first flowerings of English drama" in the Tudor period are considered to be in the town, according to the 18th century Poet laureate and scholar Thomas Warton. Whitsuntide and mystery plays were performed in the founding years of Shrewsbury School under Thomas Ashton; they attracted the attention of Queen Elizabeth I. Later this was expressed in the many arbours built in Shrewsbury for that town's particular tradition of pageantry and performance.

Shakespeare

Shakespeare memorialised the Battle of Shrewsbury in Henry IV, Part 1, in Acts IV (Scenes and 3) and V (Scenes 1-5). The arrest of Buckingham referred to in Richard III ( Act IV, scene iv) happened near Wem. Ludlow castle is also referred to in the same play (Act II, scene ii). There is a tradition that the Stanley monuments in St Bartholomew's Church, Tong are the work of Shakespeare.

Other playwrights
William Wycherley was born at Clive near Shrewsbury, although his birthplace has been said to be Trench Farm to the north near Wem later the birthplace of another writer, John Ireland, who was said to have been adopted by Wycherley's widow following the death of Ireland's parents.

The playwright George Farquhar's 1706 play The Recruiting Officer is set in Shrewsbury.

Birthplace of English ballet and pantomime
The "father of English ballet", as well as the originator of pantomime, John Weaver, developed his art in Shrewsbury. A second generation dancing master in the town, he founded English ballet, founded pantomime, and wrote on the philosophy, theology, statecraft and biology embedded in his era's understating of dance. Later in life he came to publish on the subject of dance, which he located in a wider understanding of his culture as representing a component of Ptolemaic harmony and an earnest part of the statecraft of his time.

Architecture
The first known architectural project of Inigo Jones is the Cotton monument in the Church of St Chad, Norton-in-Hales.

There are a number of important buildings in the county. The world's first iron-framed building was built in Shrewsbury at the Flaxmill Maltings: the techniques pioneered in that building were necessary preconditions for skyscrapers.

Nash and Repton were active at Attingham Park.

A rare Anglo-Saxon hall, which was a high status building from the Anglo Saxon period, and possibly a feasting hall or palace, was excavated at nearby Attingham in 2018; the dating window is between 400 AD and 1066.

Film and television

The landscape around Hawkstone Park was used to represent parts of Narnia in the BBC's TV adaptation of C. S. Lewis's books in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1988 and Prince Caspian a year later.

The 1984 film version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol was filmed in Shrewsbury. The 2005 sitcom The Green Green Grass is set in Shropshire and was filmed near Ludlow.

The 2007 film Atonement was partly filmed in the county.

The 2023 BBC adaptation of Bleak House was filmed partly in Shropshire.

Coat of arms
The blazon for the coat of arms of the county of Shropshire is:"erminois, three pile azure, two issuant from the chief and one in base, each charged with a leopard's face"The arms were officially granted on 18 June 1896 and continued by the new authority in 2009.

The heads are often referred to as "the loggerheads". This is thought to originate from the practice of carving a leopard head as a motif on the head of the log used as a battering ram.

Flag

The Shropshire county flag is a banner of arms taken from its coat of arms. It was registered with the Flag Institute in March 2012. It shows three leopard heads ('loggerheads') on a gold and blue background.

County flower
In a national poll in 2002, conducted by Plantlife International, the round-leaved sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) was chosen as Shropshire's county flower. The round-leaved sundew is a crimson-coloured insectivorous plant that requires a boggy habitat. Due to habitat loss its range is now dramatically reduced, and Shropshire's Longmynd is one of the few areas in England where it can now be found.

Shropshire Day

Shropshire's county day is on 23 February, the feast day of St Milburga, abbess of Wenlock Priory. St Milburga was the daughter of Anglo-Saxon king Merewalh, who founded the abbey within his sub-kingdom of Magonsæte. The town adjoining the priory is now known as Much Wenlock, and lies within the boundaries of the modern county of Shropshire.

Motto
Shropshire's motto is Floreat Salopia, meaning "May Shropshire flourish".

British Rail loco No.31147 was named 'Floreat Salopia',

Etymology

Shropshire is first recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle annal for 1006.

The origin of the name is the Old English Scrobbesbyrigscīr, meaning "Shrewsburyshire", "the shire of the fortified place in the scrublands" (or "shrubs", the modern derivative). Salop is an old name for Shropshire, historically used as an abbreviated form for post or telegrams; it is thought to derive from the Anglo-French "Salopesberia".

It is nowadays normally replaced by Shrops, although Shropshire residents are still referred to as Salopians.

Salop is also an alternative name for the county town, Shrewsbury, which shares the motto Floreat Salopia.

Geography
When a county council for the county was first established in 1889, it was called Salop County Council. Following the Local Government Act 1972, Salop became the official name of the county. The name was not well-regarded locally, and a subsequent campaign led by a local councillor, John Kenyon, succeeded in having both the county and council renamed as Shropshire in 1980. This took effect from 1 April of that year.

County extent
The border with Wales was defined in the 16th century – the hundreds of Oswestry (including Oswestry town) and Pimhill (including Wem) and part of Chirbury had prior to the Laws in Wales Act formed various Lordships in the Welsh Marches.

The present day ceremonial county boundary is almost the same as the historic one. Notably there has been the removal of several exclaves and enclaves. The largest of the exclaves was Halesowen, which became part of Worcestershire in 1844 (and is now part of the West Midlands county), and the largest of the enclaves was Herefordshire's Farlow in South Shropshire, also transferred in 1844, to Shropshire. Alterations have been made on Shropshire's border with all neighbouring English counties over the centuries. Gains have been made to the south of Ludlow (from Herefordshire), to the north of Shifnal (from Staffordshire) and to the north (from Cheshire) and south (from Staffordshire) of Market Drayton. The county has lost land in two places – to Staffordshire and Worcestershire.

Geographically, Shropshire is divisible into two distinct halves – north and south. The county has a highly diverse geology. The West Midlands Green Belt extends into eastern Shropshire, covering an area north from Highley, to the east of Bridgnorth, north to the eastern side of Telford, leaving Shropshire eastwards alongside the A5. This encompasses Shifnal, Cosford and Albrighton, and various other villages paralleling Dudley and Wolverhampton.

North Shropshire

The North Shropshire Plain is an extension of the flat and fertile Cheshire Plain. It is here that most of the county's large towns, and population, are to be found. Shrewsbury at the centre, Oswestry to the north west, Whitchurch to the north, Market Drayton to the north east, and Newport and the Telford conurbation (Telford, Wellington, Oakengates, Donnington and Shifnal) to the east. The land is fertile and agriculture remains a major feature of the landscape and the economy. The River Severn runs through the lower half of this area (from Wales in the west, eastwards), through Shrewsbury and down the Ironbridge Gorge, before heading south to Bridgnorth.

The area around Oswestry has more rugged geography than the North Shropshire Plain and the western half is over an extension of the Wrexham Coalfield and there are also copper deposits on the border with Wales. Mining of stone and sand aggregates is still going on in Mid-Shropshire, notably on Haughmond Hill, near Bayston Hill, and around the village of Condover. Lead mining also took place at Snailbeach and the Stiperstones, but this has now ceased. Other primary industries, such as forestry and fishing, are to be found too.

The A5 and M54 run from Wolverhampton (to the east of the county) across to Telford, around Shrewsbury parallel to the line of Watling Street, an ancient trackway. The A5 then turns north west to Oswestry, before heading north into Wales in the Wrexham area. This is an important artery and the corridor is where most of Shropshire's modern commerce and industry is found, notably in Telford new town. There are also a number of railway lines crossing over the area, which centre at Shrewsbury. To the south west of Telford, near the Ironbridge Gorge, was Ironbridge Power Station.

The new town of Telford is built partly on a former industrial area centred on the East Shropshire Coalfield as well as on former agricultural land. There are still many ex-colliery sites to be found in the area, as well as disused mine shafts. This industrial heritage is an important tourist attraction, as is seen by the growth of museums in the Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale, Broseley and Jackfield area. Blists Hill museum and historical (Victorian era) village is a major tourist attraction as well as the Iron Bridge itself. In addition, Telford Steam Railway runs from Horsehay.

South Shropshire

South Shropshire is more rural, with fewer settlements and no large towns, and its landscape differs greatly from that of North Shropshire. The area is dominated by significant hill ranges and river valleys, woods, pine forests and "batches", a colloquial term for small valleys. Farming is more pastoral than the arable found in the north of the county. The only substantial towns are Bridgnorth, with a population of around 12,000 people, Ludlow and Church Stretton. The Shropshire Hills AONB is located in the south-west, covering an area of 312 sqmi; it forms the only specifically protected area of the county. Inside this area is the popular Long Mynd, a large plateau of 1693 ft overlooking Church Stretton and to its west, the 1759 ft rocky ridge of Stiperstones.

The A49 is the main road through the area, running north to south, from Shrewsbury to Herefordshire. A railway line runs through the area on the same route as the A49 with stations at Church Stretton, Craven Arms and Ludlow. The steam heritage Severn Valley Railway runs from Bridgnorth into Worcestershire along the Severn Valley, terminating at Kidderminster.

Because of its valley location and character, Church Stretton is sometimes called Little Switzerland, and is depicted in Little Switzerland. Nearby are the old mining and quarrying communities on the Clee Hills, notable geological features in the Onny Valley and Wenlock Edge and fertile farmland in Corve Dale. The River Teme drains this part of the county, before flowing into Worcestershire to the south and joining the River Severn.

One of the Clee Hills, the Brown Clee Hill, is the county's highest peak at 540 m. It is the 13th highest county top in England.

South West Shropshire is a markedly rural part of the county, with Clun Forest, Offa's Dyke, the River Clun and the River Onny. The small towns of Clun and Bishop's Castle are in this area. To the south of Clun is the Welsh border town of Knighton.

Natural regions

Natural England recognised the following national character areas that lie wholly or partially within Shropshire:

 * Shropshire Hills
 * Shropshire and Staffordshire Plain
 * Oswestry Uplands
 * Mid Severn Sandstone Plateau
 * Teme Valley
 * Herefordshire Lowlands
 * Clun and North West Herefordshire Hills
 * Whixall Moss

Climate

The climate of Shropshire is moderate. Rainfall averages 760 to 1,000 mm (30 to 40 in), influenced by being in the rainshadow of the Cambrian Mountains from warm, moist frontal systems of the Atlantic Ocean which bring generally light precipitation in Autumn and Spring. The hilly areas in the south and west are much colder in the winter, due to their high elevation, they share a similar climate to that of the Welsh Marches and Mid-Wales. The flat northern plain in the north and east has a similar climate to that of the rest of the West Midlands.

Being rural and inland, temperatures can fall more dramatically on clear winter nights than in many other parts of England. It was at Harper Adams University, in Edgmond, where on 10 January 1982 the lowest temperature weather record for England was broken (and is kept to this day): −26.1 °C.

The only major Met Office weather station in the county is located at Shawbury, which is in the north, between Shrewsbury and Market Drayton.

Geology
Shropshire has a huge range of different types of rocks, stretching from the Precambrian until the Holocene. In the northern part of the county there are examples of Jurassic, Carboniferous, Permian and Triassic. Centrally, Precambrian, Cambrian, Ordovician, Carboniferous and Permian predominate. And in the south it is predominantly Silurian and Quaternary. Shropshire has a number of areas with Silurian and Ordovician rocks, where a number of shells, corals and trilobites can be found. Mortimer Forest and Wenlock Edge are examples where a number of fossils can be found.

Statistical
For Eurostat purposes, the county (less the unitary district of Telford and Wrekin) is a NUTS 3 region (code UKG22). The two Shropshire unitary areas (covering all of the ceremonial county), together with the authorities covering the ceremonial county of Staffordshire, comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region.

Economy

Rayburn Range and Aga Rangemaster Group are based in Telford; the PDSA is in St George's and Priorslee, Telford. The MoD have a significant depot at Lilleshall and Donnington. Here are also high-technology industries such as Unimation, Nikon, Hitachi Maxell, Ricoh, Capgemini, Fujitsu and Electronic Data Systems. In Hadley Castle, Denso Manufacturing UK Ltd make car air-conditioning systems and GKN Wheels make car wheels. Makita Manufacturing Europe at Hortonwood, Telford is the only plant in the UK that makes power tools.

Müller Dairy Ltd is based in Market Drayton, and Palethorpes, part of Pork Farms which makes own-label sausages. At Crudgington, Dairy Crest made Country Life butter and Clover until February 2015, and have their Technical Centre. Anglo Beef Processors (ABP Food Group) are at Harlescott in the north of Shrewsbury. Uniq plc have a plant at Minsterley and make chilled desserts for Tesco.

BT have their National Network Management Centre (Whittington House) in Whittington, Shropshire. Military helicopter training in the UK takes place at RAF Shawbury, alongside training for the RAF's air traffic controllers (ATC).

Towns and villages
Shropshire has no cities, but 22 towns, of which two can be considered major. Telford is the largest town in the county with a population of 138,241 (which is approximately 30% of the total Salopian populace); whereas the county town of Shrewsbury has a lower, but still sizeable population of 71,715 (15%). The other sizeable towns are Oswestry, Bridgnorth, Newport and Ludlow. The historic town of Wellington now makes up part of the Telford conurbation. The majority of the other settlements can be classed as villages or towns such as Much Wenlock or Whitchurch. Several villages have larger populations than the smallest town, Clun. The largest of these, Bayston Hill, is the 10th most populous settlement in the county. The names of several villages close to the border are of Welsh origin, such as Gobowen and Selattyn.

The larger settlements are primarily concentrated in a central belt that roughly follows the A5/M54 roadway. Other settlements are concentrated on rivers, for example Bridgnorth and Ironbridge on the Severn, or Ludlow on the Teme, as these waterways were historically vital for trade and a supply of water.

The town of Telford was created by the merger and expansion of older, small towns to the north and east of The Wrekin. These towns now have sizeable populations that now make up the population of Telford: Wellington (20,430), Madeley (17,935), Dawley (11,399) and Oakengates (8,517), but the Telford and Wrekin borough towns incentive aims to make Oakengates into the largest of the towns.

Historically, all or parts of the towns of Halesowen, Smethwick and Oldbury, as well as the Quinton suburb of Birmingham, were in Shropshire.

Parliamentary constituencies
The county has five parliamentary constituencies, four of which returned Conservative MPs at the 2005 general election and one, Telford, returned a Labour MP. This is a marked change from the 2001 general election result, where the county returned only one Conservative, three Labour and a Liberal Democrat MP to the House of Commons (see maps to the right) (Labour = Red, Conservatives = Blue and Liberal Democrats = Orange).

The current MPs of Shropshire are:
 * Shaun Davies, Labour, Telford (covering the town of Telford)
 * Helen Morgan, Liberal Democrat, North Shropshire (covering the former North Shropshire and Oswestry districts, now coextensive with the North area committee)
 * Stuart Anderson, Conservative, South Shropshire (covering the former Ludlow and (the majority of) Bridgnorth districts; now co-extensive with the South area committee except for the part covered by The Wrekin constituency)
 * Julia Buckley, Labour, Shrewsbury (covering the former Shrewsbury and Atcham district; now co-extensive with the Central area committee)
 * Mark Pritchard, Conservative, The Wrekin (covering Telford and Wrekin borough, minus Telford, and including a small area of the former Bridgnorth district/South area committee)

 * Note (*), The Wrekin (historic UK Parliament constituency) was split at the 1997 election.

2021 refers to the by election in North Shropshire only.

Divisions and environs
Most of the ceremonial county of Shropshire is covered for purposes of local government by Shropshire Council, a unitary authority established in 2009. Telford and Wrekin is a unitary authority, with borough status, which forms part of the county for various functions such as Lord Lieutenant but is a separate local authority from Shropshire Council. Many services are shared by both authorities, such as the fire and rescue service, and the two authorities co-operate on some projects such as mapping flood risk.

The new unitary authority for Shropshire, Shropshire Council, divides the county into three areas, each with its own area committee: North, Central and South. These area committees deal with town and country planning matters.

With the parishing of the formerly unparished area of Shrewsbury in 2008, the entire ceremonial county is now parished. The sizes of parishes varies enormously in terms of area covered and population resident. Shrewsbury is the most populous parish in the county (and one of the most populous in England) with over 70,000 residents, whilst Boscobel is the smallest parish in Shropshire by geographical area and by population, with just 12 residents according to the 2001 census. The smaller parishes (with populations of less than 200) usually have a joint parish council with one or more neighbouring parishes, or in some instances, have a parish meeting (such as in Sibdon Carwood). The urban area of Telford is divided into many parishes, each covering a particular suburb, some of which are historic villages or towns (such as Madeley). The parish remains an important sub-division and tier of local government in both unitary authority areas of Shropshire.

Local government 1974–2009

In 1974 the non-metropolitan county of Salop was constituted, covering the entire county. After a local campaign, the council voted 48-5 to revert to Shropshire from 1 April 1980. There was a two-tier system of local government, constituting a county council (as the upper tier) and six district councils – Bridgnorth, North Shropshire, Oswestry, Shrewsbury and Atcham, South Shropshire and The Wrekin. In 1998 The Wrekin became a unitary authority, administratively separate from the county council, and became Telford and Wrekin. The two-tier structure remained in the remainder of the county and was the least populated two-tier area in England.

Oswestry and Shrewsbury & Atcham were each granted borough status in 1974. Telford and Wrekin became a borough in 2002.

2009 restructuring

In 2006 a local government white paper supported proposals for new unitary authorities to be set up in England in certain areas. Existing non-metropolitan counties with small populations, such as Cornwall, Northumberland and Shropshire, were favoured by the government to be covered by unitary authorities in one form or another (the county either becoming a single unitary authority, or be broken into a number of unitary authorities). For the counties in the 2009 reorganisation, existing unitary authority areas within the counties' ceremonial boundaries (such as Telford and Wrekin) were not to be affected and no boundary changes were planned.

Shropshire County Council, supported by South Shropshire District Council and Oswestry Borough Council, proposed to the government that the non-metropolitan county of Shropshire become a single unitary authority. This was opposed by the other three districts in the county, with Shrewsbury & Atcham Borough Council taking their objection to the High Court in a judicial review.

The proposal to create a Shropshire unitary authority, covering the area of the existing non-metropolitan county, was supported by the DCLG and 1 April 2009 was set as the date for the re-organisation to take place. The first elections to Shropshire Council took place on 4 June 2009, with the former Shropshire County Council being the continuing authority and its councillors became the first members of the new Shropshire Council on 1 April.

Part of the proposals include parishing and establishing a town council for Shrewsbury. The parish was created on 13 May 2008 and is the second most populous civil parish in England (only Weston-super-Mare has a greater population) with a population of over 70,000.

Political control of councils
Shropshire Council has been under Conservative control since the first election held in 2009; Telford and Wrekin Council has been under Labour control since 2011.

Economy

Traditionally, agriculture has dominated the economy of Shropshire. The area later became more service-oriented. The county town of Shrewsbury, the historic castle-dominated Ludlow, the International Olympic Movement's reputed birthplace Much Wenlock and the industrial birthplace of Ironbridge Gorge are the foremost tourist areas in Shropshire, along with the restored canal-network which provides narrowboat holidays on the Shropshire Union Canal and other canals in the region. The natural beauty of the county draws people to all areas. In 2024, Shropshire was listed on the ABTA's list of global destinations to watch for its 'beautiful landscapes, towns and villages'.

Industry is mostly found in Telford, Oswestry, Whitchurch, Market Drayton and Shrewsbury, though small industrial estates have developed in most of the market towns as well as on former airfields in rural areas. In towns such as Whitchurch, much of the high street is predominantly composed of small independent business which specialise in handmade items or antiques. Shrewsbury is becoming a centre for distribution and warehousing, as it is located on a nodal point of the regional road-network.

In Telford, a new rail freight facility was opened in 2009 by Telford and Wrekin Council at Donnington with the future goal of extending the line to Stafford.

Telford and Shrewsbury are the county's two main retail centres, with contrasting styles of shopping – Shrewsbury's largely historic streets and Telford's large modern mall, Telford Shopping Centre. Shrewsbury also has two medium-sized shopping centres, the indoor "Pride Hill" and "Darwin" centres (both located on Pride Hill), and a smaller, partially covered, "Riverside Mall". Shrewsbury's location as the nearest substantial town for those in a large area of mid-Wales helps it draw in considerable numbers of shoppers, notably on Saturdays.

Well-known companies in Shropshire include Müller Dairy (UK) Ltd in Market Drayton. The Royal Air Force operates two bases at RAF Cosford and RAF Shawbury, and the charity PDSA has its head office in Priorslee, Telford.

Statistics
Below is the chart of regional gross value added for the non-metropolitan county (that is, excluding Telford & Wrekin) of Shropshire at current basic prices, with figures in millions of British pounds sterling.

With the statistics for the borough of Telford and Wrekin included, the following represents the ceremonial county:

Education

The Shropshire Council area has a completely comprehensive education system, whilst in the borough of Telford and Wrekin there are two selective schools, both of which are located in Newport—these are the Haberdashers' Adams School and Newport Girls' High School (both of which are ranked within the top thirty schools in the country). In Telford itself is the Thomas Telford School, ranked as one of the best comprehensive schools in England.

Some Shropshire children attend schools in Wales, including Llanfyllin High School.

The county has many independent schools, such as Oswestry School (founded in 1407), Shrewsbury School, (founded in 1552), and Ellesmere College (founded in 1884).

There are three sixth-form colleges located in Shropshire: the New College, Telford, Shrewsbury Sixth Form College and Ludlow College. Haberdashers’ Adams and Newport Girls' High Schools both provide sixth-form education as well as secondary education.

There are also two institutions of higher education in Shropshire, the Telford campus of the University of Wolverhampton and in Edgmond, near Newport, Harper Adams University, which formerly offered mostly agriculture-based degrees but is expanding its range of provision. A third higher education institution was created in Shrewsbury in 2015, which is a campus of the University of Chester.

In Ironbridge, the University of Birmingham operates the Ironbridge Institute in partnership with the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, which offers postgraduate and professional development courses in heritage.

Shropshire has the highest educational attainment in the West Midlands region.

Transport

Shropshire is connected to the rest of the United Kingdom via a number of road and rail links. Historically, rivers and later canals in the county were used for transport also, although their use in transport is now significantly reduced. The county's main transport hub is Shrewsbury, through which many significant roads and railways pass and join.

Canals in Britain were originally constructed for the transport of goods, but are now mainly used for leisure. In northern Shropshire three canals with a total navigable length of 41 mi are managed by the Canal & River Trust: the Shropshire Union Canal (from north of Adderley to near Knighton), the Llangollen Canal (from Chirk Aqueduct to Grindley Brook) and the Montgomery Canal (from its beginning at Frankton Junction to Llanymynech). In addition, the Shrewsbury and Newport Canal potentially could be restored in the future.

Major roads in the county include the M54 motorway, which connects Shropshire to the rest of the motorway network, and more specifically to the West Midlands county. The A5 also runs through the county, in an east–west direction. The road formerly ran through Shrewsbury, although a large dual-carriageway bypass has since been built. Other major trunk roads in the county include the north–south A49, the A53 and the A41.

There are a number of major railway lines running through the county, including the Welsh Marches Line, the Heart of Wales Line, the Cambrian Line, the Shrewsbury to Chester Line and the Wolverhampton to Shrewsbury Line, as well as heritage railways including the well established Severn Valley Railway. The Cambrian Heritage Railway exists in Oswestry. The three train operating companies working in the county are West Midlands Trains, Transport for Wales and Avanti West Coast. A new company, Wrexham & Shropshire, commenced services from Shropshire to London Marylebone, in spring 2008 but the service was discontinued on 28 January 2011 leaving Shrewsbury without a direct link to the capital. Virgin Trains (the operator at the time) recommenced services from Shrewsbury to London Euston on 11 December 2014, having withdrawn them in the late 1990s, however, their successor Avanti West Coast is set to withdraw service once again in June 2024.

Two major water supply aqueducts run across Shropshire; the Elan aqueduct running through South Shropshire carrying water from Elan Valley to Birmingham and the Vyrnwy Aqueduct running through North Shropshire delivering water from Lake Vyrnwy to Liverpool.

Television
The county is covered by BBC West Midlands and ITV Central from its studios in Birmingham. Television signals are received from either the Wrekin or Sutton Coldfield TV transmitters. A minority of the county is served by BBC Cymru Wales and BBC North West.

Radio
BBC Local Radio for the county is served by BBC Radio Shropshire which broadcast from its studios in Shrewsbury, BBC Radio WM can also be heard in eastern parts of Shropshire. County-wide commercial radio stations are Free Radio Black Country & Shropshire, Greatest Hits Radio Black Country & Shropshire, Heart West Midlands, Capital North West and Wales, Smooth West Midlands and Sunshine Radio (serving Ludlow and southern parts of Shropshire).

Newspapers
The Shropshire Star is the local newspaper which covers the whole county.

Places of interest

 * Adcote nr. Shrewsbury
 * Attingham Park, Atcham
 * Benthall Hall, Broseley
 * Blists Hill, Madeley
 * Boscobel House, nr. Wolverhampton
 * Bridgnorth Cliff Railway, Bridgnorth
 * Bridgnorth Castle, Bridgnorth
 * Brown Clee Hill, South Shropshire
 * Buildwas Abbey, Buildwas
 * Burford House
 * Caer Caradoc, nr. Church Stretton
 * Cambrian Heritage Railway, Oswestry and Llynclys
 * Chetwynd Park, Newport
 * Cardingmill Valley, Church Stretton
 * Clun Castle, Clun
 * Flounder's Folly, nr. Craven Arms
 * Fordhall castle and farm
 * Haughmond Hill, nr. Shrewsbury
 * Haughmond Abbey
 * Hawkstone Park, North Shropshire
 * Hopton Castle, nr. Craven Arms
 * Ironbridge Gorge
 * Kynaston's Cave, nr. Nesscliffe
 * Langley Chapel, nr. Shrewsbury
 * Lilleshall Abbey, nr Newport
 * The Long Mynd, Church Stretton
 * Ludlow Castle, Ludlow

 * Mitchell's Fold, nr. Chirbury
 * Moreton Corbet Castle, Moreton Corbet
 * Newport Guildhall, Newport
 * Offa's Dyke Path, Welsh Marches
 * Puleston Cross, Newport
 * Severn Valley Railway, Bridgnorth
 * Shrewsbury Abbey, Shrewsbury
 * Shrewsbury Castle, Shrewsbury
 * Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), South Shropshire
 * Shropshire Union Canal
 * Snailbeach Lead Mines nr. Shrewsbury
 * South Telford Heritage Trail, Telford
 * Soulton Hall nr. Wem
 * St Laurence Church, Ludlow
 * The Stiperstones, nr Pontesbury
 * Stokesay Castle, nr Craven Arms
 * Sunnycroft, Wellington
 * Telford Steam Railway, Telford
 * Titterstone Clee Hill, nr. Ludlow
 * Wenlock Edge, Much Wenlock
 * Wenlock Priory
 * White Ladies Priory
 * Whittington Castle, nr. Oswestry
 * The Wrekin (and Ercall) nr. Wellington
 * Wroxeter Roman City, Wroxeter, nr. Atcham

Notable people

 * Abraham Darby, early industrialist
 * Adrian Jones, sculptor of the Quadriga at Hyde Park Corner
 * Alison Williamson, of Church Stretton, archery Olympic bronze medalist
 * Amy Bagshaw, international gymnast
 * Barbara Pym, novelist
 * Billy Wright, born in Ironbridge, Wolverhampton Wanderers footballer and England captain
 * Carol Decker, lead singer of the 1980s pop group T'Pau, went to school in Shropshire
 * Charles Babbage, early computing pioneer, lived at Dudmaston Hall in 1814
 * Charles Darwin, eminent naturalist developed the theory of evolution by natural selection, born in Shrewsbury
 * Chris Hawkins, radio presenter and DJ, born in Loppington
 * Craig Phillips, of Newport, winner of Big Brother 2000
 * David Edwards, footballer (born in Pontesbury), Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C & Wales
 * Edith Pargeter (1913–1995), author
 * Edmund Plowden (1518–1585), legal scholar and theorist
 * Sir Edmund Plowden (1590–1659), proprietor, Earl Palatine and Governor of New Albion
 * Edric the Wild, Anglo-Saxon magnate
 * Edward Waring (1736–1798), mathematician
 * Eglantyne Jebb of Ellesmere, social reformer and founder of the Save the Children Fund
 * Fred Jordan, farm worker from Ludlow and one of the great traditional English singers
 * George Jeffreys, of Wem, infamous judge
 * Georgina Frederica Jackson, compiler of Shropshire Word-Book
 * Sir Gordon Richards (1902–1986), 26 times flat racing Champion Jockey, born at Donnington Wood
 * Greg Davies, comedian and actor grew up in Wem
 * Humphrey Kynaston (died 1534), highwayman
 * Isobel Cooper (Izzy), opera singer from Much Wenlock
 * Ivan Jones, writer of The Ghost Hunter
 * Jesse Armstrong, screenwriter and producer, creator of Emmy-winning TV show 'Succession', and co-creator of comedy TV shows 'Peep Show' and 'Fresh Meat'
 * John Benbow, Admiral of the White, born in Shrewsbury
 * Joe Hart, born in Shrewsbury, Celtic and England goalkeeper
 * John Mytton, 'Mad Jack' Mytton, Regency rake, MP, gambler and horseman
 * John Wilkinson, of Broseley, industrialist
 * Jonathan Corbett, TV presenter
 * K. K. Downing, guitarist with Judas Priest
 * Lara Jones, writer of the Poppy Cat books
 * Len Murray, former head of the T.U.C.
 * Lord Acton, 19th century historian
 * Mal Lewis Jones, writer
 * Mary Beard, classicist and public personality at Cambridge University
 * Mary Webb (1881–1927), author
 * Matthew Jones, footballer
 * Matthew Webb, first man to swim the English Channel
 * Mirabel Osler, author
 * Pete Postlethwaite, actor, lived near Church Stretton until his death in 2011
 * Sir Philip Sidney, prominent Elizabethan
 * Richard Lee I, first member of the Lee family of America. Ancestor of Thomas Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Richard Henry Lee, Henry Lee III, Thomas Sim Lee, and Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
 * Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, 'Clive of India', born near Market Drayton
 * Sir Rowland Hill, coordinator of the Geneva Bible and possible inspiration for As You Like It
 * Rowland Hill, 1st Viscount Hill, Napoleonic era general
 * Roy Wood, of Wem, in the band Wizzard
 * Stewart Lee, stand-up comedian, writer and director
 * Sybil Ruscoe, TV and radio presenter
 * Trevor Rees-Jones, bodyguard and author
 * Tricia Sullivan, American science fiction author, lives in Shropshire
 * Wilfred Owen, leading First World War poet
 * William Farr, epidemiologist and early bio-statistician
 * William Henry Griffith Thomas (1861–1924), evangelical Anglican theologian
 * William Penny Brookes, from Much Wenlock, founder of Wenlock Olympian Games
 * William Wycherley, Restoration dramatist and playwright known for The Country Wife

Sport

There are a significant number of sporting clubs and facilities in Shropshire, many of which are found in Shrewsbury and Telford in addition to a number of clubs found locally throughout the county. Shropshire is home to a variety of established amateur, semi-pro and professional sports clubs.

The county is home to one of five National Sports Centres. Situated at Lilleshall Hall just outside Newport in Lilleshall, this is where the 1966 England National football team trained for two weeks prior to their success in the World Cup of 1966.

Football
The three highest football (and only professional) clubs in the county are Shrewsbury Town (EFL League One), A.F.C. Telford United (Southern League Premier Division Central) and The New Saints (Welsh Premier League) in Oswestry.

There are numerous semi-professional football clubs in the lower leagues. The governing body in the county is the Shropshire Football Association, who organise a number of county-wide cup competitions, including the Shropshire Senior Cup. In 2020 the Shropshire County Football League was created, replacing the Shropshire Premier League. the following Shropshire clubs play in these English leagues (the highest team of each club shown only):

Also, some clubs situated near the Welsh border play in the Welsh league system:

Other sports
The historic Wenlock Olympian Society Annual Games (begun 1850) are held annually in Much Wenlock during the second weekend in July. A four-day festival, the Games include cricket, volleyball, tennis, bowls, badminton, triathlon, 10k road race, track and field events, archery, five-a-side football, veteran cycle events, clay pigeon shooting and a golf competition.

The county has a number of private and public golf courses, including the Church Stretton Golf Club, situated on the slopes of the Long Mynd. It is the oldest 18-hole golf course in Shropshire, opened in 1898, and one of the highest in the United Kingdom. There is one notable horse racing racecourse in Shropshire, near Ludlow, the Ludlow Racecourse.

The area also has a rich motorsports heritage, with the Loton Park Hillclimb and Hawkstone Park Motocross Circuit situated near Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury Motocross Club has staged motocross events in the area for over 30 years. There is additionally an ice hockey club in the county, the Telford Tigers.

One of the biggest one-day events in Shropshire and the biggest one-day cycle race in the UK is the Shropshire Star Newport Nocturne, founded 1970; held every four years, it is Britain's only floodlit cycle race.

The county has one American football team, Shropshire Revolution, which was founded in 2006, and is a club in the British American Football League. Former teams in the county have included the Wrekin Giants, which ran from 1985 to 1989 and the Shropshire Giants which ran in 1989. Shropshire has a number of rugby clubs, including Newport (Salop) Rugby Union Football Club, the highest-leveled team in the county, playing in the National League 3 Midlands.

title: Shropshire