SIR – May I take issue with Karl Dallas regarding St George (Letters, April 18)? While noting his espousal of English nationalism (something, as an old lefty, I’m a bit uneasy with), I don’t accept his statement that St George was “a Palestinian”.
St George, if he existed, seems to have been born in Syria, Palestina, in the area now known as Israel, so, if we are going to use anachronistic terms, we should count him as a Jew!
His father seems to have been a Roman soldier from Cappadocia, so George may have been half-Greek, and his mother was from “Palestine”, which was a region, not a nationality.
We don’t know whether she was Arab (unlikely), Canaanite, Jewish-Christian, Syrian or Greek.
Should I be accused of taking Mr Dallas’s letter too seriously, it is because of his closing jibe about David Cameron and “the Right” (a mysterious entity), and his mention of “the idiot fringes of fascism” (so some fascists are, well, OK)?
One does not have to be a right-winger to believe that multi-culturalism is not necessarily a good thing.
In any case, is it not time we found a new patron saint, with more historical credibility?
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