ON St George’s Day, I read a letter from Allan Tunningley.

He started by suggesting that, quite correctly, we English do not celebrate the date with enough vigour and “effervescence” but then continued to offer a series of arguments about why this was a good thing!

Mr Tunningley suggests that the figure of St George doesn’t have any connection with the country and patron saints in other parts of the United Kingdom at least have some actual physical (albeit in Scotland’s case, a relic) connection to the country.

So does that mean that people from any country other than Palestine shouldn’t be Christians, or Jews or Muslim?

Utter rubbish.

Does it really matter that St George didn’t actually set foot on the shores of England? Mr Tunningley continues to suggest that our adoption of him was purely a monetary decision.

While this may have initially been the case, this position makes a slight at everyone who strove, fought and died for what he represents — this country and the kind of free speech that he so lavishly displays with derision.

There is nothing wrong with being proud of this country. Yes, we haven’t been angels for all our history, (look at the US) but that doesn’t mean that the people who are the constituents of what this country is now, shouldn’t be proud of that fact.

I am proud to be half English, proud to be half Maltese (another country whose patron is St. George), proud to be Catholic (oh yes, that’s not English is it?), and proud to be tolerant of all faiths, colours and creeds. I am not some sort of bigoted, rampant nationalist that he implies — I am just an honest Englishman.

Finally, Mr Tunningley, you strike me much rather like Neville Chamberlain — “shhhssh don’t be proud of being English just in case you are seen to be a racist”. Isn’t this appeasement in another form?

To quote Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Chris Houghton Bolton