The article deals with some key aspects of appearance and development of the structural linguistics in Great Britain in the 20th century. The author briefly specifies the facts which led to the appearance of the structural tradition in linguistics, then gives a short overview of basic features and enumerates the main schools. A special emphasis is laid on the development of the structural tradition in the end of the 20th century, which is connected to the British linguist John Lyons. The author makes an attempt to analyze Lyons’ views expanded on in his works and considers critical essays of some other foreign and Russian linguists. Special attention is paid to basic principles of Lyons’ semantic theory and to evaluation of the role of the structural approach to language in the history of linguistics and its transformation with time. The research has been carried out on the basis of original English sources as well as critical essays by Russian linguists that are experts in the sphere of general linguistics and history of linguistics. The novelty of Lyons’ approach was in the attempt to create a universal semantic theory for carrying out linguistic research which would meet conditions of adequacy. Such an approach has become a logical development of the ideas of the London school. The author comes to the conclusion that at present it is not possible to speak about keeping and developing structural ideas in the British linguistics, but it is necessary to point out the interdisciplinary character of the scientific studies.