Text 2. LONDON FAMOUS BUILDINGS

1. Westminster Abbey is a fine Gothic building, which stands opposite the Houses of Parliament. The oldest part of the building dates from the eighth century.

2. If you go past the magnificent tombstones of kings and queens, past the gold-and-silver banners of the Order of the Gar­ter, which are hanging from the ceiling, you will come to Poets' Corner. There many of the greatest writers are buried: Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling. Here too, are memorials to Wil­liam Shakespeare and John Milton, Burns and Byron, Walter Scott, the great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

3. Here in the Abbey there is also the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, a symbol of the nation's grief. The inscription on the tomb reads: “Beneath this stone rests the body of a British Warrior unknown by name or rank brought from France to lie among the most illustrious of the land”.

4. The Tower on the north bank of the Thames is one of the most ancient buildings of London. For many centuries the Tower has been a fortress, a palace, a prison and royal treasury. It is now a museum of arms and armour, and as one of the strongest fortresses in Britain, it has the Crown Jewels.

5. The ravens whose forefathers used to find food in the Tower still live here as part of its history. There is a legend that if the ravens disappear the Tower will fall. That is why the birds are carefully guarded.

6. The Tower is guarded by the Yeomen Warders, popularly called Beefeater. There are two letters, E.R., on the front of their tunics. They stand for the Queens name Elizabeth Regina. The uniform is as it used to be in Tudor times.

7. Every night at 10 p.m. at the Tower of London the Ceremony of the Keys or locking up of the Tower for the night takes place.

Подберите абзацы, содержащие ответы на следующие вопросы:

1. What is written on the tomb? ¨

2. Who is the Tower guarded by and what legend is there? ¨

3. What is Poets Corner and where is it? ¨

4. What is the Tower and what was it for many centuries? ¨

5. When does the Ceremony of the Keys take place? ¨

6. What is Westminster Abbey and how old is it? ¨

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