Yes, the price really is just £2.95, and it contains 120 pages of information about how to program the Electron.

One slight drawback to this seemingly lovely state of affairs is that each page measures over 12cm in width, yet the text only covers some 7cm.

Some of the enormous margin space is occasionally filled with diagrams, but mostly it simply contains huge titles which emphasis the space even more.

So perhaps Mr Williams could have condensed the book into about 70 pages of normally spaced script, but I don't suppose it would have seemed such good value...

Still, back to the book, which is subtitled "How To Write Your Own Programs".

The reader willing to try out the ideas as they are broached in the course of the book will doubtless gain much which will help towards writing programs for the Electron.

It really covers less ground that the excellent Acorn Electron User Guide, but perhaps Mr Williams scores by making the steps through the book small and simple enough for the average reader to follow quite happily.

I wasn't too sure why the author explains GOTO and GOSUB at some length before he introduces the idea of a PROCedure.

As I said earlier, there is nothing at all in this book which is not dealt with in the manual. But it is user-friendly - to use the jargon - and for £2.95 it will give many people a little more encouragement as they move from playing with their Electron (or is it the Electron playing with you?) to making it do as it is told.

A useful stocking filler perhaps, and plenty of room to doodle in the margins!

Phil Tayler