SIR - In reply to Derek Konig (T&A, January 24) and his appreciation of my attempts to promote a recognition of English culture and identity. I fully accept that the Romano-British settlement of these islands predates the arrival of the first Anglo-Saxon invaders.
But the colony the Romans abandoned did not produce the ethnic group or culture historians would recognise as English. Mr Konig is right to place the English in the context of wider European experience, but this in no way alters those indefinable qualities that set the English apart and defines them as a separate race.
The land the Anglo-Saxons conquered and settled, from Offa's Dyke to Hadrian's Wall, still corresponds exactly with the recognised borders of modern England. The descendants of these people, and I count myself as one, share 15 centuries of collective history, experience, language and culture that is linked to, but quite separate and unique from other British cultures.
The Anglo- Saxons and Jutes (or embryonic English) and the culture they introduced remains at the heart of what it is to be English, and no amount of socialist-inspired multiculturalism and global-village mumbo jumbo should be allowed to detract from our rich cultural past.
Andrew Clarke (English Democrats candidate), Halifax Road, Wibsey
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