Geography of the United Kingdom
geography of a country
The United Kingdom is a country located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. With a total area of approximately 244,376 square kilometres (94,354 sq mi), the UK occupies the major part of the British Isles archipelago and includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern one-sixth of the island of Ireland and many smaller surrounding islands. It is the world's 7th largest island country. The mainland areas lie between latitudes 49°N and 59°N (the Shetland Islands reach to nearly 61°N), and longitudes 8°W to 2°E. The Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in south-east London, is the defining point of the Prime Meridian.
The UK lies between the North Atlantic and the North Sea, and comes within 35 km (22 mi) of the north-west coast of France, from which it is separated by the English Channel. It shares a 499 km (310 mi) international land boundary with the Republic of Ireland. The Channel Tunnel bored beneath the English Channel now links the UK with France.
The British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies are covered in their own respective articles (see below).
Area
The total area of the United Kingdom according to the Office for National Statistics is 244,376 square kilometres (94,354 sq mi), comprising the island of Great Britain, the northeastern one-sixth of the island of Ireland (Northern Ireland) and many smaller islands.
“Geography of the United Kingdom” enters the record as geography of a country. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Geography, United and Kingdom can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q129373. Authority coordinates are 54.000, -2.500. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Geography of the United Kingdom” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.