I made this [letter] very long only because I have not had the leisure to make it shorter. -- Blaise Pascal
When we moved to Australia, a couple of recruiters called me out because my resume, done in American style, was only two pages. Australian CVs are expected to be multiple pages, if justified. So I made a longer one and have been using it ever since.
UK companies apparently expect only two pages at max. So today I took my five page CV and somehow pared it down to just two pages. It was a pain, and not just because I had to fight with Word.
But: it's been submitted now to a UK jobs website, so to some extent, the die is cast. I suspect I will have to do a lot more work than just waiting for companies to come to me, but we were getting antsy about actually starting to make something happen, so this is a good step.
