Sir, – Chris Johns assures us that a few years after Brexit the British will be "clamouring to join the euro" ("Brexit parallels with the fall of Rome are all too obvious", Business Opinion, October 22nd). No doubt they will be inspired to do so by the example of Greece's extraordinarily successful membership of the euro zone; the miserable poverty of non-euro economies such as Norway and Switzerland will, of course, provide a warning to the citizens of any European country with its own currency. – Yours, etc,
CDC ARMSTRONG,
Belfast.
Sir, – Chris Johns’s claim that the supporters of Brexit suffer from a lack of awareness of history would be much more convincing if he did not cite the deeds of emperors of the mid-first (Nero) and late second century AD (Commodus) as if they were somehow relevant to the fall of the Roman empire in the fifth century AD, which they most certainly were not. The fall of the Roman Empire was due to several complex issues, not least youthful, immature leaders (think Leo Varadkar, Emmanuel Macron, or worse) and uncontrolled mass immigration (think Syrian refugee crisis, or worse). – Yours, etc,
Dr DAVID WOODS,
Department of Classics,
University College Cork.