Letter: Nixon note

WILL WATERGATE be seen as 'just a footnote' to Richard Nixon's history ('Slow shuffle down a dark and shady path', Review, 22 May)? A man reaches the highest political office and uses it to subvert democracy. As Shakespeare put it: 'For sweetest things could turn sourest by their deeds;/ Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds.'

Democracy is too precious (and rare) to be so lightly defended as your other reports on quangos and the 'privatisation' of the Civil Service indicate.

Leila Roberts

Ripon, North Yorkshire