Acquire a globe, to avoid Mercator bias. You will see that there are a variety of island sizes. There are Very Big Islands/Small Continental Masses - Oz, Antarctica, Greenland. There are Very Small Islands - many, many, volcanic islands, rocky things on the fringes of larger masses, etc. There are Small Islands - in the Mediterranean, for example, Indonesia, etc. There are Large Islands - Madagascar, Borneo. And the rest- Sumatra, Java, Japan's main island, Newfoundland, Iceland, NZ North and South. I'm not sure where Papua/New Guinea and Baffin Island fit, But Britain is not in either of the small groups, nor debatably near either of the boundaries. It's a medium sized, average-sized island. Don't compare it with the few large islands, or the continental masses, in order to put it down.

A small island is like Graham island in the Med. Any island whose extremities are out of sight by reason of the Earth's curvature cannot be described as small, and may be called, locally, the mainland. It was probably called the mainland before America and Australia were even dreamed of by its inhabitants.

Penny