The Week

The twenty-fifth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union opened With a six-hour speech by Mr Brezhnev,

Itself preceded by a twelve-column-foot [sic] leader in Pravda. Kommunist added its own warning: 'The dominance of petty

bourgeois elements could lead to the party Sliding over to a left-adventurist, nationalist or right-opportunist social democratic

course'. Mr Andrei Amalrik, the Russian dissident, was freed, at least temporarily; Other signs of dissent were awaited from the leaders of western Communist parties. One of them got off to a bad start: M Marchais was denounced in the Albanian Paper Zen i i popullit as a 'petty-bourgeois megalomaniac'.

Mr Healey's 'axe' (if it was one) sent a Shudder, or a nervous twitch, through the Labour Party. Miss Joan Maynard warned darkly that the 'Government may meet the Pay-off at the Coventry by-election', and it was rumoured that there might be as many as fifteen ministerial resignations. In the event there was only one, Miss Joan Lestor (the lone jester'). Mr Healey survived, as Well, a meeting with the TUC and, fortified, Went on to describe his critics as 'out of their tiny Chinese minds'. The Chinese embassy reasonably protested that this was an ill-chosen phrase.

No one could know what was going through Mao's Chinese mind as he received ex-President Nixon in Peking with the formality normally reserved for a head of state. As a good Chinese joke, Mao asked Mr Nixon to pass on his best wishes to President Ford. Ford was not amused, and his aides blamed the Nixon visit for the President's set-back in the New Hampshire Primary. The Democratic primary was won by Mr Jimmy Carter, a man who probably Wears the same grin when announcing a bereavement.

Fifty years on, the Ampthill case reappeared to provide almost as much public Merriment as the first time round, with, as

one paper put it, 'shy and reticent accountant Mr John Russell' trying to prove that

his half-brother Mr Geoffrey Russell was

Illegitimate (and therefore not his halfbrother) and therefore not the heir to their

father's (or not) title. The Privileges

Committee of the House of Lords heard evidence from the late Lady Ampthill's Maid, and Sir John Foster discussing blood samples. Also in London a Greek Cypriot girl won a libel action against her former husband: he had put it about that she had not been a virgin when they married. The New York State legislature voted Overwhelmingly against allowing Concorde to land at Kennedy airport, but both the French government and the American

transport secretary doubted whether this was within the state's power.

L. S. Lowry died. It had been his proud boast that he had never been abroad and had never owned a motor car or a telephone. Manchester and Salford art galleries started to haggle over who should have his paintings. Sir Val Duncan's estate was proved at £488,000.

Mr Justice Me!ford Stevenson was criticised by his legal superiors and by Mr Marcus Lipton MP. He answered back, saying of Mr Lipton that 'I don't know him and hope I never do.' Five days later he 'greatly regretted' some of the things that he had said.

NATO was split by the Cod War when Iceland broke off diplomatic relations with Great Britain; and the European Community's officials came out against any extension of the twelve mile fishing limit. But the EEC united to make a declaration on Rhodesia, whither the British Government sent an 'exploratory' negotiator—he was held up on his way to Salisbury in the Canary Islands—to see if Mr Smith was serious about something or other. His neighbour, President Kaunda, was certainly serious about continuing to refuse to recognise the MPLA in Angola, and addressed the ambassadors of the Eastern bloc countries in terms which made them walk out.

Brentford Nylons was placed in the hands of the receiver. Its founder, Mr Kaye Metresian, was described as 'a great human being' by Mr Alan Freeman, a disc jockey v6ho had• been paid 00,000 to advertise Mr Metresian's wares on television. But the week's best example of the way people only talk when quoted by the newspapers came from Mr John Cordle MP. There had been a scene in church when the wife of the Bishop of Salisbury had moved away from Mrs Cordle, because. Mr Cordle explained, 'it was obvious that she was not prepared to sit next to the beautiful young lady who had just become the third wife of a sixty-fouryear-old man'.