British paratroops open fire on a civil rights march in Derry, killing thirteen, in what becomes known as Bloody Sunday

The British government suspends the parliament at Stormont and imposes direct rule from Westminster

Ultimos Ritos ('Last Rites'), an oratorio by John Tavener, has its first performance in Haarlem in the Netherlands

Peter Maxwell Davies's opera Taverneris performed at Covent Garden

The Orleans House Gallery is opened to the public, mounting a regular series of temporary exhibitions

English dramatist Caryl Churchill's first play, Owners, is produced in London

English poet James Fenton publishes his first collection, Terminal Moraine

British economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher publishes an influential economic tract, Small is Beautiful

Thames Water Authority takes over from the Metropolitan Water Board and Hampton waterworks becomes part of Thames Water which is later privatised

Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow conjures up weird events in wartime London

The career of virtuoso cellist Jacqueline du Pré's is cut short by multiple sclerosis

Work starts on a new building for the Public Record Office on the site of former government offices in Kew, Surrey

Martin Amis, son of Kingsley Amis, publishes his first novel, The Rachel Papers

Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell dance together in the premiere of Kenneth MacMillan's Manon

British physicist Stephen Hawking describes how black holes can emit radiation, a process now known as 'Hawking radiation'

Mark Brown is the last craftsman to build and hire rowing boats in the St Helena Boathouses, as the arches gradually become adapted to non-commercial purposes

Internment is ended in Ulster after the Gardiner Report states that it brings the law into disrepute

Richard Burton marries Elizabeth Taylor for the second time, five years after divorcing

The first series of Fawlty Towers, co-written by and starring John Cleese, is broadcast on British TV

David Hockney begins a new career as a set designer, with The Rake's Progress by Stravinksky at Glyndebourne

The British group the Sex Pistols launch punk rock, with their first gig at St Martin's School of Art in London

English author Ruth Prawer Jhabwala wins the Booker Prize with her novel Heat and Dust

Frederick Ashton creates a ballet based on Turgenev's play A Month in the Country, to music by Chopin

Britain's new National Theatre, designed by Denys Lasdun, opens on the South Bank in London,

The new building for the Public Record Office in Kew is first opened to the public, on the seventeenth of October