21 AUGUST 2004, Page 23

Scots empire-builders

From Eric Wilson Brown Sir: My congratulations to James Michie, surely a self-mocking closet Jock, on his witty poem (Friendly Fire', 14 August). It reminds me of a Flemish joke about their antipathy towards the Walloons:

Un Wallon dans La Meuse, c'est la pollution.

Tous les Wallops dans la Meuse, c'est la solution.

But where would England be without its Scots? Who really made the British empire? I trust that The Spectator is not too introspectively English to acknowledge this debt.

Eric Wilson Brown

Bromley, Kent