11 APRIL 1998, Page 27

Sir: Matthew Parris, worried by present and future cost, joins

other writers, including a British academic who should know better, in misquoting Prime Minister Wellington, himself none too keen on a Falklands com- mitment. The Duke wrote as follows: It is not clear to me that we have ever possessed the sovereignty of all these islands.' Also, Parris might have pointed out that it was Prime Minister North who got Samuel Johnson to write negatively about the Falk- lands, not before Britain's expulsion from West Falkland — Parris's inference — but after, as a means of subduing the clamour for war with Spain.

M Meadmore

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