Sir, – Lucille Redmond's An Irishwoman's Diary (December 9th) rightly draws attention to the remarkable level of anti-Irish prejudice implicit in the Kipling and Fletcher School History of England (1911). It did not go unnoticed at the time. The Irish historian Alice Stopford Green wrote an angry letter to the Westminster Gazette on November 9th, 1911, censuring the "contempt and calumny" of the authors and wondering if such a view expressed the imperial mind of England. Through Green's influence the matter was raised in the House of Commons. On November 23rd, Cathcart Wason MP addressed a question to the chief secretary, Augustine Birrell, on whether the book was available in national schools in Ireland. The minister assured the house that the offending work was not in common use in Ireland, even if it was widely distributed in the English school system. – Yours, etc,
ANGUS MITCHELL,
Limerick.