November 1973 was quite a month. President Nixon, just weeks from his impeachment, insisted to a press conference of 400 journalists that he was not a crook. Meanwhile, the Yom Kippur war and the OAPEC oil embargo that followed had triggered an energy crisis. As Henry Kissinger took his ‘shuttle diplomacy’ across the Middle East, the UK government – already mired in labour disputes across the coal and electricity sectors – was forced to declare a state of emergency. It wasn’t all doom and gloom though: an estimated half a billion people watched the wedding of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips; ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ ... (full story)