Welcome end to Britishness

Published on 28/10/2012 00:00

EUAN McColm allocates to Britishness a power which it simply does not possess (­Perspective, 21 October).

I sat as a young child listening on the wireless each evening to the latest war news and occasionally asking my mother if there would be any such thing as news when the war was over. We were told fairly regularly on the wireless that “England stands alone in this war”. My father often ­aggressively wondered aloud what the 51st Highland Division were doing while England was standing alone.

We all understood, even at my age, that English and British were the same thing. We were not all that proud to be British, especially in the ­final weeks of the war when the newspapers reported the blanket bombing of Dresden and the mass annihilation of European children like myself.

In the twilight years of a long life I will be delighted to see the end of both Britain and Britishness.

Alan Clayton, Strachur, Argyll