SIR - Andrew Clarke is certainly to be lauded in his attempts to promote English identity and culture' (T&A, January 21) but, by its very nature, an identity stretching back over (only) 15 centuries' cannot be considered in any respect indigenous' to our island as there were many discrete societies here prior to AD 500.

The English people, its language and culture are, at best, a synthesis of many racial tribes, customs and traditions drawn mainly, though obviously not exclusively, from the Indian-European grouping.

I don't see that Mr Clarke's need to differentiate between perceived constituents on the basis of recency of arrival adds anything to his arguments but it is valuable to remember that, as part of the Roman Empire, many thousands of Africans, to give just one example, lived, worked and settled here at least two centuries before the first ancestral English' migrants arrived.

Derek Konig, Shetcliffe Lane, Bierley, Bradford