Nicholas Boyle's excursus into history ("England arise," The Tablet, 11 October) was wanting in any reference to the Norman Conquest of England and, some hundred odd years later, Ireland, as contributory in the making of England's pre-eminence in the unification of the Britannic Islands, as Aristotle called them.
Again, it wanted any reference to the “Saxon foe” as they are called in the Republic of Ireland's national anthem – that same foe, in the words of the Welsh anthem Men of Harlech that the British would eventually repel.
That repelling was, for some, seen as realised in the rise of the Tudors, with their Welsh roots, as noted by J J Scarisbrick in his biography of Henry VIII. Henry’s pleasure, also, in Erasmus addressing him as no mere English king but as a Britannic Majesty is not passed over.
William Miller, Belfast
Loading ...
