The last thing I saw before the prang was a squadron of Jerries swoop down from behind the sun. I ducked, dived and downed one, but there were too many. With a sudden jerk, my tail was shot to blazes; and as the old girl spun to terra firma, I bailed out. As I stumbled across the French countryside, rather shaken I may add, I came across a peasant.

'Parlez-vous Anglais?' I asked.

'Non,' he replied.

I swallowed hard. I'd better learn the lingo quickly. Occupied France - possibly the toughest examination ever, of a British Pilot's nerve. French On The Run - the most adventurous way to revise French ever invented!

Welcome to French On The Run - the first in a series of adventures in education from Silversoft.

As an RAF officer forced to bail out over Nazi-occupied France your task is to make your way back to England. To do this, you must escape detection by passing yourself off as a Frenchman, but you will need to make use of the clues and information given by the people encountered in your travels.

We are offering a free weekend in Paris as a prize to the first person to return to England alive, having completed the puzzle set near the end of Route 4. Don't worry, the program will tell you about it in good time.

You will begin each route with a small amount of money - not a fortune - but sufficient to get you to your destination. Mistakes along the way will usually result in a penalty of some kind being imposed, either a time penalty, or one that involves unforeseen expenditure, or occasionally, detection and death.

Each of the first three escape routes must be completed by a given deadline, of which you are informed at the beginning of that route.

Once you have begun a route, the status line at the top of the screen will keep you informed of the date and time, and will also tell you how much money you have left.

As each route is geographically accurate, a map of France will be of help in telling you where you are in relation to your destination; and whether or not it is possible to reach it in the time remaining - I suggest that you keep one handy.

O.K. then, off you go. The chaps here wish you the best of luck, and by the way - DO try and remember the details shown on your false papers; interrogations can be pretty swift and to the point if you slip up!

There are four programs on the tape/disk. They are of increasing difficulty and must be played in sequence. When you play the game for the first time therefore, you must begin on Route 1.

To enter Routes 2, 3 and 4 you will need a password. You will be given the password for Route 2 when you have successfully completed Route 1, and so on. Later on, when you have obtained the passwords for Routes 2, 3 and 4 you can go straight to them.

At the beginning of each route, you will have to enter your christian name, and in all but the first route, a password.

You should finish each word with a RETURN. Use the DELETE key if you make a mistake. If your name contains an accent (as in Andre) you can use the standard French accented characters. For example, e acute is function key f0.

The program will repeatedly ask you to choose a response. The possible responses will be displayed on the screen, each with a number next to it. You select a response by pressing the corresponding number on the keyboard, followed by RETURN. You will notice that when a key is pressed, an arrow will appear pointing to the response which you have selected. It is not too late to change your mind at this point - pressing another number will move the number to the desired response. Only when RETURN is pressed does your decision become irrevocable. Be particularly careful when a flashing skull appears: a wrong move here could be fatal.

Usually, after your selection has been made, the (linguistically) incorrect responses will be deleted one by one, leaving only the correct response on the screen.

At first sight, this might seem to make the game too easy - it doesn't. It does mean however, that the best way to get through a route is, each time you make a mistake, to remember the correct response.

Before moving on to the next scene (which you do by pressing SPACE) you can recover all the possible options by pressing , This can sometimes be of use in sorting out where you went wrong.

The BASIC program "FOR", which loads the data files, contains some data statements which can be altered in order to vary the screen display and the volume of the introductory music. If you LOAD and LIST this program you will see that there are REMarks which explain how to do this. We have no objection to your altering this program to suit your own tastes.