Letter: In Brief

Sir: Alan MacColl wrote (letter, 30 December) asking, "In what sense can anyone in the last 1,000 years have been `British' before the [Anglo-Scottish] Union of 1707?" There is an accurate historical answer: Y Brythoniaid - the original Celtic British who gave their name to our island at least 2,000 years ago, a name used by Julius Caesar and used universally ever since to describe the whole place.

I write as a descendant of these original British from the small patch vouchsafed to us, oddly and inaccurately called "Wales" - derived from the Teutonic term for "foreigner". Tut, tut.

S T CHARLES CBE

Tenby, Pembrokeshire