bed breakfast scotland, glasgow, holiday accommodation, tourist short breaks, holiday guest house, bed breakfast scotland

In the south, the Industrial Revolution brought flourishing towns and expanding populations, the creation of industries such as cotton and shipbuilding, and booming trade. The spread of urban life coincided with an intellectual flowering, the Scottish Enlightenment, as people fed the energy they'd previously spent on religious issues into their leisure and money-making activities. Literature in particular blossomed. Life for the privileged became increasingly bourgeois, while the poor got poorer, suffering typhoid epidemics and other side-effects of their overcrowded tenement life. Cities grew even bigger following one of the bleakest events in the north's already grim history: the Highland Clearances that began in the late 1700s and continued for more than a century. Overpopulation, the potato famine and the collapse of the kelp industry caused landlords to force or trick people from the land. Waves of Scots emigrated to North America, New Zealand and Australia, taking with them their reputation for thrift and hard work. The few who remained on the land were pushed onto tiny plots called crofts.

Industrial prosperity lasted through WWI, but the world depression of the 1930s struck a mortal blow. Aberdeen was the only city to show marked prosperity in the 20th century, thanks to North Sea oil and gas discoveries in the 1970s. Continuing economic hardship, rampant unemployment, the depopulation of rural areas and lower standards of health and housing than those experienced in England have all led to a loss of confidence. However, dreams of seceding from the Union with England are stronger than they've been for many years.

Strongly Labour, the country smarted through the 1980s and '90s under Britain's Conservative-led government, which showed scant regard for the country's desire for self-rule. The decisive Labour victory in the 1997 general election resulted in the loss of all Conservative seats in Scotland and the birth of a Scottish Parliament, which first convened in 1999. A new parliament building is being constructed at Holyrood in Edinburgh, and is expected to open in November 2003. The Labour government has already granted limited Scottish devolution, so the birth of an independent Scotland some time in the 21st century isn't such a romantic idea after all.

Historically, the Scots have been under-represented in British art and music, but they have packed a mighty wallop in the worlds of science, literature and philosophy. Scots came up with logarithms, the second law of thermodynamics and the laws of electrodynamics; they revolutionised steam power and invented bitumen, waterproofing, the telephone, the television and radar. Scots have been pioneers in anatomy, antiseptics and the development of penicillin. One of them, Adam Smith, even came up with the wacky idea of the invisible hand of capitalism. The Scots attribute this impressive roll call to the country's long-standing emphasis on a good education.

The Scottish have an impressive artistic legacy, kicking off with the wild man himself, Robbie Burns, and is continuing this reputation, as Hollywood fetes members of the Mac Pack such as Ewen McGregor and Robert Carlyle, and literary festivals go gaga over grunge-and-drugs writers like Irvine Welsh. Perhaps the most famous icon of Scottish traditional culture is the Highland bagpipe, which achieved the height of its popularity during Queen Victoria's reign - she liked to be woken by one playing outside her window. Tartans, that other Scottish icon, date back to the Roman period, but were only associated with particular clans after the 17th century.