Michael White’s richly evocative portrait of life in these isles circa Christmas 1973 (28 December) made much of the technological gulf between past and present. With not a microchip in sight, the former Cabinet Secretary, Robert Armstrong, had to communicate with his yacht-fancying Prime Minister, Edward Heath, by short-wave radio. Yet in many ways the singularity of this bygone world of power-cuts, industrial strife and miners’ leaders insisting that their real aim was to bring down the Government, was encapsulated by the opening clip of Heath’s voice – unctuous, exhortatory and de haut en bas – announcing the latest round of austerity measures. No politician would dare speak like that to his electors these days, and if Heath’s cabinet lacked anything