30 MAY 1992, Page 23

Cheaper than suing

Sir: Noel Malcolm is entitled to hate my book, Downfall: The Ceausescus and the Romanian Revolution (Books, 23 May) but he's not entitled to accuse me of being an apologist for communism. In fact were not The Spectator my favourite magazine this letter would have come from my expensive solicitors.

The 'puritan ideals' ascribed by me to the Ceausescu regime were: a ban on abortion, no contraception, minimum skirt and hair lengths, and heavy disapproval of divorce and premarital sex. Sounds pretty puritan, doesn't it?

Downfall provides a withering attack on the Romanian communist regime and com- munism in general — and by a left-wing author too.

George Galloway MP

House of Commons, London SWI