What I'm a bit surprised / unsure of is what happens when I run "dig ns gov.uk". The results are:
gov.uk. 21559 IN NS ns1.surfnet.nl.
gov.uk. 21559 IN NS auth50.ns.de.uu.net.
gov.uk. 21559 IN NS ns3.ja.net.
gov.uk. 21559 IN NS ns2.ja.net.
gov.uk. 21559 IN NS ns0.ja.net.
gov.uk. 21559 IN NS auth00.ns.de.uu.net.
gov.uk. 21559 IN NS ns4.ja.net.
Who is ja.net , uu.net and surfnet.nl ..?EDIT: I see that ja.net i.e. jisc.ac.uk "manages the second level domain .gov.uk" -- https://www.jisc.ac.uk/domain-registry . I imagine that uu.net and surfnet.nl are there for redundancy