CLOSURE OF CLASSICS AT QUEEN'S

Sir, - As an honorary graduate of Queen's University, I am angered and bewildered by the academic council's decision to close down the classics department.

With respect to politics, philosophy, language, poetry, drama, architecture, mathematics, the sciences, sport, we are all of us three-quarters Greek and Roman, whether or not we realise it.

The so-called academic planners who would close down Latin and Greek are wiping out a crucial part of the map by which we know ourselves and find our way.

Have the barbarians arrived? Yes. But worse: they are in charge. I pray that the university will think again. - Yours, etc.,

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MICHAEL LONGLEY, Osborne Gardens, Belfast 9.