Current Time in Reading, United Kingdom

Reading stands in the county of Berkshire in southern England, roughly sixty kilometres west of central London, at the point where the River Kennet flows into the Thames. Its position in the broad Thames Valley, with the Chiltern Hills to the north and the Berkshire Downs to the west, has made it a natural crossroads since Saxon times. The town centre mixes medieval street patterns, Victorian red brick and a great deal of glass-fronted modern office building.

Around one hundred and seventy-five thousand people live in the town itself and well over three hundred thousand in the wider urban area, making Reading one of the largest settlements in England without formal city status. Its importance today is economic. The Thames Valley corridor around Reading is one of Europe's densest concentrations of technology companies, and Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco and many others have major British operations here, earning the area a reputation as the country's answer to Silicon Valley.

Reading grew around its abbey, founded in 1121 by King Henry I, who chose to be buried there. The abbey became one of the richest in England and a place of pilgrimage before it was dissolved by Henry VIII, and its ruined walls still stand beside the Forbury Gardens. In the Civil War the town was besieged and badly damaged. Victorian prosperity rested on what locals summarised as beer, bulbs and biscuits, referring to Simonds brewery, Suttons Seeds and the Huntley and Palmers biscuit factory, which was for a time the largest in the world. Reading Gaol, built in 1844, held Oscar Wilde from 1895 to 1897 and inspired his last great poem.

Visitors find the abbey ruins, the Maiwand Lion in Forbury Gardens, the Museum of Reading with its full-size Victorian replica of the Bayeux Tapestry, and the Museum of English Rural Life. The Oracle centre brings shopping and restaurants down to the Kennet waterside, while towpath walks lead out along the Thames to Sonning and Henley. Reading Festival, held every August bank holiday since 1971, is one of the oldest and largest rock festivals in the world.

The town has a young and strikingly international population, with large Polish, Nepalese, South Asian and Caribbean communities, and its food and music scenes reflect that mix. Football is followed keenly at the Select Car Leasing Stadium, and rowing on the Thames is a local passion.

Transport is exceptional. Reading station is one of the busiest interchanges in Britain, with fast trains reaching London Paddington in under half an hour, direct services to the West Country, Wales, the Midlands and the south coast, Elizabeth line trains into central London and a direct rail link to Heathrow's airport buses. The M4 motorway passes just south of the town.

The University of Reading, established in 1926, is known for agriculture, meteorology and its parkland Whiteknights campus.

Reading offers history, commerce and easy access to both London and the English countryside in a single compact package.