Michael Frayn's farce Noises Off opens in London's West end

Local volunteers take over regular filling of Kew Pond from Richmond Council so that constant water level can be maintained

British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, promoter of the punk style, shows a collection called Punkature

British economist Nicholas Kaldor attacks monetarism in The Economic Consequences of Mrs Thatcher

Ronald Harwood's play The Dresser is partly inspired by the British actor Donald Wolfit

British skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean earn a perfect score for their Bolero programme in the Sarajevo winter Olympics

British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and union leader Arthur Scargill begin a bitter personal struggle in the miners' strike

New additions to St Mary's are completed, designed by Edward Cullinan, to replace the parts destroyed by the fire of 1978

English athlete Daley Thompson sets an Olympic and world record in the decathlon at the Los Angeles Olympics

English author Julian Barnes publishes a multi-faceted literary novel, Flaubert's Parrot

British architects James Stirling and Michael Wilford complete a new art gallery for Stuttgart

Genetic (or DNA) fingerprinting is invented and developed by British geneticist Alec Jeffreys

Ian Botham is the first player to achieve the double triple, with a total of more than 3000 runs and 300 wickets in Test cricket

The miners' strike, ending after eleven bitter months, proves a turning point in the struggle between Margaret Thatcher and the unions

17-year-old German tennis-player Boris Becker becomes the youngest ever to win the men's singles at Wimbledon

Live Aid, an all-day concert for famine relief in Africa, is held simultaneously in London and Philadelphia

Britain's Margaret Thatcher and Ireland's Garret FitzGerald sign an Anglo-Irish Agreement to tackle shared problems

British Rasta poet Benjamin Zephaniah publishes his second collection as The Dread Affair

The Marble Hill estate transfers to English Heritage

A terrible fire destroys much of the King's State Appartments, third floor and roof of the South Front of Hampton Court

Tony Cragg's Raleigh is unveiled outside the Tate Gallery in his home town of Liverpool

Harrison Birtwistle's second opera, The Mask of Orpheus, brings him an international reputation

Mad Cow Disease (BSE, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy ) is identified and described in Britain

Pope's Villa becomes St James Independent School for Boys.

English poets John Fuller and James Fenton collaborate in a volume of satirical poems, Partingtime Hall