Abortion and the single girl Sir: The appearance of 'Abortion
and the single girl' (7 July) is completely out of place in a periodical regarded as a serious weekly.
As I read the piece. 1 felt I had strayed into the Bond Game, and this passage had been originally intended for The Spy Who Loved Me, but, somehow, it had been omitted, and here it was, a sort of Ian Fleming codicil, appearing under a feminine pen-name in the SPECTATOR!
The accepted spy-thriller technique is evident everywhere, the crisp. 'with-it' dialogue, the liberal dropping of proprietary names, Emergency —Ward Ten in a clinical Swiss setting, and (the real Fleming touch!) the 'Old Man,' the Big Boss figure. directing the 'operation.' There is, too, the almost perfect short-story ending as taught by the writing schools. The writer of such stuff obviously has a future—in the proper market, but, please, not in the pages of the SPECTATOR!
Dixon Finlay 47 Westcombe Park Road, Blackheath, London SE3
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