Old school truths
ram Mr C.D.C. Armstrong Sir: Leo McKinstry's description of our old school, Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, as a sectarian establishment (The triumph of the pygmies', 23 June), was a complete revelation — or, to be more truthful, a total distortion. Mr McKinstry writes that Portora is a Protestant school. It is true that most pupils are Anglicans or belong to other Protestant denominations, but Portora has never imposed confessional qualifications for entry. In my time the school had Catholic teachers and pupils; among the latter group two boys were the nephews of a Fianna Fail politician. And Portora can boast among its alumni not only Wilde and Beckett but also Father John Sullivan Si, whose cause for beatification is under consideration by the Catholic Church.
McKinstry states that he was a Portora contemporary of Nigel Dodds, the Democratic Unionist MP for North Belfast. This claim is true only in the rather tenuous sense that McKinstry arrived at Portora in the third form at the start of Mr Dodds's last year in the sixth form. In any case, to treat Dodds as a typical Old Portoran is not unlike treating Oswald Mosley as a typical Wykehamist, Old Portoran politicians over the past century have represented most shades of political opinion: Portora has produced Unionist and Conservative MPs, a Fine Gael TD and one of the few Ulster Protestants to fight in the Easter Rising on the rebel side. Dodds's one fellow Old Portoran in the Northern Ireland Assembly is the Catholic Unionist Sir John Gorman, MC.
Colin Armstrong
Belfast
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