Sir - Tony Augarde - Augarde on the Box - (whom I usually agree with) is rather wide of the mark when he dismisses Margaret Thatcher - the Long Walk to Finchley (BBC 4) in one sentence, saying that it was 'so fictionalised as to be incredible; full of caricatures and unlikely incidents'.

I can assure him, as a woman candidate from 1958 to 1970 it was often exactly as portrayed in the film. Half a century ago, women were rarely chosen for safe seats, even after they had slogged it out in a hopeless seat already. Some of the interviews in the film were very true to life. The women Conservative Party workers were often the ones who preferred men candidates to work for. Married women with children were thought too much of a risk.

'A Woman's Place is in the Home' was too often heard. Margaret Thatcher's application to stand for Oxford was turned down and only men applicants were seen.

For the handful of us women who hoped to stand for Parliament, rejection letters came thick and fast so that, with no chance of an interview, we had no opportunity to show a constituency what we might be able to do.

Funnily enough, I was chosen to fight my first Parliamentary seat when the male front-runner lost out because the selectors did not like his wife who came with him.

Ann Spokes Symonds, Oxford