If you're looking for a Basic tutor that you can browse through during the boring bits in World of Sport, then don't buy The Century Computer Programming Course For The Commodore 64. As well as £10.95, this book is going to require a lot of dedication and hard graft.

Edited by professor Peter Morse and Brian Hancock of the Central London Polytechnic it's written very much in the style of a university text book. That means three hundred and forty pages, microscopic print, but no small talk, just how to write good Basic programs.

The authors recommend you set your C64 up in a quiet place where you won't be disturbed, and spent about an hour a day working through the course. Given the amount of material in this book I estimate that would take you about four months, working on it three days a week.

The material is arranged in four sections. First Steps, Essentials of Basic Programming, The Complete Programming Method and The Application of Programming.

The C64's individual traits are all covered in detail: graphics, colour and sound, loading and saving programs, to mention but a few. However, the book's main emphasis is on teaching sound programming methods. Hence algorithms, flow and structure diagrams, decision structures and the like are all given extensive coverage.

Exercises are included at the end of each chapter so you can test your comprehension of the ground covered.

Don't be put off by the intellectual style of this tome. The approach is suitable whether you're a complete newcomer to Basic or have some experience and want to pick up some more sophisticated techniques.

The reward for your hard work will be a sound grounding in the techniques of programming in Basic whether on the Commodore 64 or, for that matter, any other machine. From there on in, it's up to you to put what you've learnt to use in your own programs.

The definitive Basic book for the C64.