PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
The new decade began in sober fashion, with police reporting a large drop in the number of drivers returning positive breath tests over the holiday period despite an increase in the number of tests performed. V. S. Naipaul the author and David Steel the politician were knighted in the New Year's honours, and Maggie Smith the actress became a Dame. Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse, who was Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet in the Falklands War, Miss Daphne Park, the former diplomat and principal of Somerville College, and Sir Francis Tombs, chairman of Rolls-Royce, were made peers. Frank Bruno, the boxer, was appointed an MBE. Meteorologists concluded that 1989 was the warmest year for at least 300 years — the time in which reliable records have been kept — but refused to attribute it to the greenhouse effect. A large cache of arms was disco- vered on the Dyfed coast; two Irishmen were arrested. While the ambulance dis- pute raged on it was reported that 603 people had succumbed to the recent out- break of influenza. Sir Lennox Berkeley, the composer, and Charlotte Bonham Car- ter, the nonagenarian partygoer, Paul Jen-
nings the humourist, and the dowager Marchioness of Cholmondely all died.
ON THE first Christmas Day to be openly celebriited in Rumania for 40 years Presi- dent Nicolae Ceaucescii and his supportive wife Elena were executed on the charge of genocide following a short trial in an unknown' location. When the bodies of the couple were later shown on television to a world that did not mourn them, the over- throw was still not quite complete, as a large number of the Securitate remained to be rooted out of an extensive system of tunnels beneath Bucharest. They were enticed by the threat of the firing squad if they did not surrender.. By New Year's Day peace appeared to have returned, and a makeshift government was able to announce the abolition of the death penal- ty and plans for free elections to be held in April. The original estimate of 60,000 lives believed to have been lost in the revolution was later reduced to at most 7,000. In Panama, General Noriega sought sanctu- ary in the Papal Nunciature as US troops pursued him in an attempt to extradite him to the United States for trial over his involvement in the trafficking of drugs. As official residences were ,searched General Maxwell Thurman, head of the US South- ern Command, appeared to extend the charges against General Noriega to encom- pass witchcraft, and bombarded the Nunci- ature with popular music at excruciating volume. In a week that saw the waxing of democracy in Czechoslovakia, the play- wright Vaclav Havel was elected President, as expected, and ex-President Dubcek was returned to political office as chairman of parliament. The Brandenburg Gate was opened in Berlin in time to become a venue for Christmas and New Year celebrations. One man died and 200 were injured in the throng. There were ethnic riots in Azerbaijan. The first 11 people ever to be recorded killed by seismic activity in Australia fell victim to an earthquake that struck the industrial city of Newcastle, 100 miles to the north of Sydney. An oil slick 175 miles long was drifting off the Moroccan coast following a fire on board an Iranian tanker. Samuel Beckett, the Irish playwright who adopted France as his home, died aged 83.
RJC
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