Shipping Forecast largely autobiographical account of growing up in Liverpool during the 1940s and 1950s, opens with a shipping forecast from this period. In an episode of the BBC sitcom "Keeping Up Appearances", a soon-to-be-sailing Hyacinth Bucket calls over the telephone for an advance shipping forecast, even though the yacht she and her husband Richard are to visit is moored on the Thames near Oxford. Names mentioned (in scene sequence) are: Fisher, German Bight and Cromarty, Dogger and Heligoland (also known as German Bight). In an episode of the BBC sitcom "Ever Decreasing Circles", Howard and Hilda leave their neighbour Paul's house
History of the British Isles Insular Celtic group. What languages were spoken in the islands before is unknown, though they are assumed to have been Pre-Indo-European. In 55 and 54 BC, Roman general and future dictator Gaius Julius Caesar launched two separate invasions of the British Isles, though neither resulted in a full Roman occupation of the island. From AD 40 to about AD 410, southern Britain was a part of the Roman Empire, with archaeologists referring to this area as "Roman Britain", and this time span the "Romano-British period" or the "Roman Iron Age". In and around the same time period, Ireland was being