Druidic truths
Sir: Julie Burchill (Diary, 4 July) has got it wrong about Mrs Dwina Gibb. She is not 'the first female leader of the Druids in 200 years' but the first patroness of the order of Bards Ovates and Druids for 200 years. As for Miss Burchill's question: 'Who was the last one? She never worked again, obvious- ly', she was Augusta, Princess of Wales and mother of George III.
Nor was Mrs Gibb born a Catholic, she was born a Protestant. Her forebears being `soupers', that is Catholics who swopped denominations in order to qualify for English (and Protestant) charity soup with which to feed their families. Need I remind Miss Burchill that the Irish had a famine in the late 1840s? Mrs Gibb, as a schoolgirl, was suspended from her Protestant school in Northern Ireland for daring to suggest that she would like to learn the Irish lan- guage.
In addition, Mrs Gibb is, like Miss Burchill, a novelist, her Cormac the Seer being published earlier this year. It deals with the adventures of a legendary bard and High King of Ireland.
I think Miss Burchill is at least half cor- rect when she writes that the Welsh 'are the English as they long to be in their wildest dreams'. I would say that this honour actu- ally belongs to the Irish. I quote from Ulick O'Connor's biography of Brendan Behan: 'The Irishman seems to embody all that the Englishman seems to have exorcised from his life in the pursuit of duty. He is the anti- self of the Saxon.'
Andrew Dickson
20 Arundel Mansions, Kelvedon Road, London SW6
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