Letter: Oh England, thou art sick]

Sir: Apropos the article by Paul Johnson and the British addiction to doom-mongering (8 March):

Oh, England:

Sick in head and sick in heart,

Sick in whole and every part;

And yet sicker thou art still

For thinking thou art not ill.

(Anon, written before 1675, collected in N. Ault, Seventeenth Century Lyrics, New York, 1928.)

Yours sincerely,

PHILIP BRINDLE

Bedford,

Bedfordshire

10 March