17 JANUARY 2004, Page 28

From Professor Robin Jacoby Sir: Theodore Dalrymple's emigration to France

smacks of Daniel going blindfold into the lions' den. The social and moral degeneration he so accurately describes in Britain is no less, as he virtually admits, on the other side of the Channel. Furthermore, there is a revolutionary tradition there which makes the prospect of violent unrest from the underclass more likely.

Robin Jacoby

Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford