In his article ‘Betrayal at Dunkirk’ (February 24), Rodolfo Ragonesi fails to appreciate a couple of important points.

Firstly, had the evacuation not been a success (and I, for one, consider the return to Britain of 300,000 troops to be one of my country’s “finest hours”) then Britain would have been in no position to offer any resistance to Adolf Hitler.

Prior to Dunkirk, many in Winston Churchill’s War Cabinet were pressuring our erstwhile prime minister to sue for peace. Dunkirk left Britain in a prime negotiating position with the Nazi regime because, suddenly, we had no need to negotiate. Thank God for that because negotiating with Hitler would have made Brexit look like a picnic.

Secondly, Dunkirk was symbolic. In the aftermath, it engendered a British determination to defeat Nazism and whipped up public support inthe US for our fight against a tyrannical regime, ultimately leading to financial support for our war effort from across the Atlantic.

Dunkirk was not an act of betrayal. It was a story of heroism in the face of adversity. It was about fighting to preserve the democracy which those of us in Europe nowadays take for granted.