Abstract
This article analyses S. Maugham’s and N. Hornby’s works, exploring how national values and ethno-culture are reflected in their writing. The study focuses on their works, one classic and the other modern, revealing the peculiarities of their styles, language. The article examines the role of phraseological units in creating character images in works of art, based on Hornby's modern English novel ‘About a boy’ and 'The Razor's Edge' by S. Maugham. Phraseology plays a crucial role in language as it helps to convey the author's true intentions. By updating the usual and occasional meanings in context, phraseological units allow readers to understand the depth and versatility of artistic images created by writers. The idiomatic and phraseological units employed by writers can be used to construct a cultural picture of nation and country. Therefore, studying the works of classic and modern writers is a significant objective in itself. The employed methods, namely comparative, cultural-historical and stylistic analysis of the collected data, contributed to the revelation of the principal approaches of the two writers in their representation of reality. The results of the study reflect the linguistic features of the prose of the two writers, including stylistic devices, fixed expressions and idioms. This enables a linguistic and literary analysis and interpretation of the British works, thus conferring practical significance upon the study. It is concluded that both writers use phrases related to their national mentality and historical periods.