 What is Britain?
The visitor may wonder about the different names used to describe the country referred to as Britain, Great Britain, the United Kingdom, the U.K., and England (the latter still being used by much of the rest of the world, including the United States).
Correctly speaking, Great Britain comprises England, Wales, and Scotland, together with all the offshore islands, including the Isle of Wight, the Isle of Scilly, the Hebrides, Orkney, and Shetlands.
The United Kingdom comprises Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Isle of Man in the Irish Sea, and the Channel between Great Britain and France, are largely self-governing, and are not part of the U.K.
The name “British Isles” is essentially a geographical term, and describes all of the above plus the whole of the island of Ireland, as well as the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
Britain is located on the westernmost edge of the continental shelf of Europe. Is consists of two large and several hundred small islands that were separated from the European continent in about 600 BC. The mild maritime climate and gently undulating lowlands give the mainland an excellent agricultural base. The landscape becomes increasingly mountainous toward the north, rising to the Grampian Mountain in Scotland, The Pennines in northern England, and the Cambrian Mountains in Wales. The major rivers include the Thames in the south, the Severn in the west, and the Spey in Scotland.
Climate
Britain's climate is often thought of as cool, wet, cloudy and windswept. This generalisation however, fails to take account of the many regional variations in weather, on the microclimates that are found all over the country. It is also a fact that, increasingly, global warming appears to be blurring the distinctions of the seasons, especially the autumn (fall) –winter- spring period. The British weather overall is controlled mainly by a series of depressions from the Atlantic that move across or pass near the British Isles on account of the prevailing southwesterly wind.
Who are the English?
Politically speaking, the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland including the indigenous English, Scots, Irish, and Welsh those from former colonies, and the many others who have made Britain their adopted country, are called “British”. On the other hand, it is essential to understand that the historic cultural traditions of the British, particularly the Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Nordic, and Norman French cultures remain the centre of the “British way of life”.
The centuries of conflict that were finally resolved in the Act of Union uniting the governments of England and Scotland in 1707 generated a profound and, at times, fiercely defended sense of separate identity. This is, perhaps, best demonstrated in the separate national football and rugby teams for England, Scotland and Wales. The matches between England and Scotland are fought out with immense passion, above all because they are a matter of national pride; but overall, most people would agree that there is far more to be gained by remaining united.
Multicultural Britain
In all there are in Britain today some 4 million people (7,1 percent of the population) from other ethnic backgrounds (or a total 9 percent). These new communities are not evenly spread across the country, creating a very mixed pattern of integration and cohesion.
More than four-fifths of the total population of the United Kingdom live in England. The greatest concentrations of population are in London and the Southeast, South and West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside, the West Midlands, and adjoining towns in the Northeast on the rivers Tyne, Wear, and Tees.
Following the passing of the Race Relations, Act of 1976, which brought about the establishment of the Commission for Racial Equality, the government has actively promoted a policy affirming the multi-racial nature of British society.
The sounds of Britain
The history of Britain has left a rich archeology; but it also left a remarkable “voiceprint” across the different regions of the country, with a great variety of accents, dialects, and vocabulary that can differ, event within the same region, from village to village and town to town. With over 16,500 rural towns, villages, and hamlets in England, the majority having populations of fewer than 500, many language variables evolved. If you link this to British history, and the story of how the Island “mongrel race” evolved, it is hardly surprising. Even when Chaucer was writing his Canterbury Tales at the end of the fifteenth century, he was drawing on a vocabulary containing Celtic, classical Latin, Vulgar Latin, Medieval Latin, Saxon, Jutish, Northumbrian, Norman French, Central French, Danish, and Norwegian! And since then, borrowed elements from the rest of the world have been added – from Hindi and Urdu to African-American rap.
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