I WAS absolutely disgusted to read in Peter Barron’s column about the case of Frankie (Echo, Jul 22), who failed the tests for British nationality while working as a stable lad for racehorse trainer Michael Dods.

I’m very interested in history, but would not been able to answer with any certainty several of the questions you listed.

One question I did know the answer to was “when did the first Christians appear in Britain?” The answer to that is almost certainly in the first or second century (not third and fourth, given as the correct answer) as auxiliary troops with the incoming Roman armies.

Certainly, by the time Emperor Septimius Severus arrived in 207/8 AD he found what was to him an alarming number of Christians in the country - and they certainly hadn’t all arrived in the previous seven to eight years.

There were enough for Severus to be alarmed, because Christianity challenged one of the arms of Roman government, the Roman state religion.

A first impression of the questions is that they were taken from a children’s history book of the 1950s and knowledge has moved on since then. But the whole thing seems to smack of “let’s see how we can catch them out – fair or otherwise – and send them back where they came from”. Shades of Trump, I’m afraid.

So, if the Home Office can’t get the answers right – what hope for the rest of us? How many incorrect answers would invalidate the test?

Jean Woodward, Durham.