Modern Use
In current usage, the northern parts of Great Britain are often referred to simply as 'the North' though this term is also used to describe the northern parts of England. This usage is often prevalent in social commentary on the suggested 'North-South divide'.
The universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh, in addition to Heriot-Watt University, organise a North Britain Student Forum on geoscience and engineering topics. There is a North British Rowing Club based in Edinburgh.
It is also used in prehistoric studies to delineate between geographical areas, taking in the idea that it is incorrect to pose modern boundaries onto past situations, such as the modern country of Scotland onto the non-unified early tribes of North Britain of prehistory.
The term is now used very little as it is seen as derogatory by the Scots who with the rise in Scottish nationalism prefer to be referred to as Scottish or British usually depending on their view of the union.
Read more about this topic: North Britain
Famous quotes containing the word modern:
“The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The experience of the gangster as an experience of art is universal to Americans. There is almost nothing we understand better or react to more readily or with quicker intelligence.... In ways that we do not easily or willingly define, the gangster speaks for us, expressing that part of the American psyche which rejects the qualities and the demands of modern life, which rejects “Americanism” itself.”
—Robert Warshow (1917–1955)