AS patriotic English people we know our country is the best in the world and always has been: an island of peace, justice, tolerance, fair play and humanity in a capricious and violent world.

That's perfectly true, but a little realistic self-appraisal does no harm, and in that spirit we should maybe re-examine certain episodes of our past.

Take the Wars of the Roses. We know this conflict was certainly fierce, but it was chivalrous and honourable, too. Or was it?

A charnel pit dating from one of those battles was discovered some years ago and the hundreds of skeletons recovered showed clear evidence that the unfortunates concerned had not fallen in the battle.

They were prisoners killed afterwards, and before being killed they had been tortured and mutilated. Not nice.

Such details suggest we are not so very different from our nearer European neighbours after all.

Having said that, we currently need a major resurgence of English core values. Standards have slipped so much, at least partly because we have become so disgracefully ignorant of our history.

Tony Kelly, Crook, Co Durham.