PORTRAIT OF A WEEK At the age of fifty-two, and
at the very end of the Arab peace talks he had worked hard to realise, President Nasser died of a heart attack. Hundreds of thousands immediately started to make the pilgrimage to his lying-in-state in Cairo and violence flared up in the Middle East as mourners rioted in Gaza and Jerusalem. All but six (all of them American) of the hostages held by the Palestinian guerrillas were rescued by King Httssein's troops during the savage civil war that flared up in Jordan. The freed crew of the hi-jacked BOAC airliner returned to Britain to recount grisly stories of their incarceration.
Those Londoners who were not deprived of their papers by a strike of distributors also read of the progress of the trial at the Old Bailey of Arthur and Nizam Hosein, accused of kidnap- ping and murdering Mrs Muriel McKay, and witnessed the rapid breakdown of brotherly love. The Liberal party unpacked their bags at Eastbourne, but for all the fuss they caused they need hardly have packed them in the first place. The Labour conference began at Blackpool with trade unionists laying into their party leaders and Mr Wilson laying into_them (and naturally Mr Heath) in return. Mr Heath was reported to be planning a trip to Asia, while Mr Nixon had already embarked on his wanderings, reach- ing Rome on his European state visits. In his absence Intrepid withstood the hair-raising challenges of Australia's Gretel II to retain the America's Cup. Belfast continued to riot, women and troops being attacked. In the Dublin gun-running trial Colonel Michael Hefferman, former director of army intelligence, revealed that last February the Irish army was ordered to prepare for Incursions' into Northern Ireland. BOAC foiled an attempt by two Americans to hi-jack one of their planes to Tel Aviv. London dustmen, sewage workers, market sweepers, cemetery workers and other employees of the oi5uneil went on strike, with a response described by a trade union official as 'magnificent'.
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