Sir Alec Douglas-Home lost by only four seats. If he'd won, we might have been spared the hideous Heath and escaped servitude in the Euro-gulag. But then there might never have been Margaret Thatcher and we might still have nationalised industries and trade union thugs. Welcome to a world in which words are never minced and fools are not suffered at all, let alone gladly. Veteran journalist Michael Green has a trenchant opinion on everything from local library closures to the internal politics of African nations, from trendy directors who muck about with Shakespeare to the absurdities of computerised banking. In these memoirs he draws on his diaries and his early days as a reporter for papers in his native Yorkshire, as well as his copious articles for the Times and the Daily Telegraph (where among other duties he edited the humorous Peterborough column). Caustic, poignant or provocative, his observations brim with wit, insight and the conviction of experience. | The Hack's Progress by Michael Green, Paperback | Indigo Chapters