IN HIS compulsive history, The Isles, Lancastrian Norman Davies quotes late 14th century Cornish translator John Travista.

"All the language of the Northumbrians, and especially at York, is so sharp, piercing rasping and unformed that we Southerners can rarely understand it. I believe that the reason for this is because they are near to foreigners and aliens who speak in strange ways, and also because the Kings of England have always lived far away from that country."

With the North-South divide still evident more than 600 years later, how do today's readers regard Travista's observations?

Mr Davies argues Britain was not and is not an island. That, by nature's hand, it was not is fact; that it is not is questionable. Does the Channel Tunnel deprive it of "island" status? No way.

Ron Willis,

First Avenue,

Mt Lawley, Western Australia.

Updated: 09:35 Saturday, May 25, 2002