Letters: Prommers have good reason to be proud when they sing Rule, Britannia!

SIR – The cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason describes feeling uncomfortable about the playing of Rule, Britannia! at the Last Night of the Proms (report, January 21). Perhaps if there was wider awareness of the origins of these words, minds might be set to rest. Rule, Britannia! was inspired by a lad from Penryn, Cornwall. Thomas Pellow was 11 years old and on his first sea voyage with his uncle when they were captured by Barbary pirates and taken into horrific, cruel, brutal slavery under Sultan Moula