LETTER : Knock knock

Neal Ascherson is quite wrong to suggest that my hostility to nationalism derives from old-style Communist internationalism (18 May).

My antipathy is far more deeply-rooted, personal and unromantic. My observation of history leads me to believe that when nationalism comes knocking, the Jews have to get packing. When Jewish nationalism in the form of Zionism came knocking, the Palestinians had to get packing. Thus did the warning lights go on in 1993 when, while accepting the Booker Prize, James Kelman spoke of the continuing oppression, by the "English colonialists" of the "indig- enous people of Scotland". Does that latter group include Mohammed Sarwar and Malcolm Rifkind or not?

Linda Grant

London EC1