Nixon's America, Heath's England, petrol 36p a gallon. Howard and Barbara Kirk , fashionable Watermouth University's well-known progressive couple, are throwing one of their celebrated parties. Another fresh term -new faces to radicalise, old issues and adversaries to be confronted. History needs some action and Howard has just the scheme for an autumn of disruption.

The Kirk seminar - an advanced scholastic encounter with George Carmody , the perfect teaching aid and the only boy in the university with a trouser press. For Howard, a bonus in confronting the liberal establishment. But first there's the party to be scrutinised with Flora, and indeed Annie and Felicity ...

The departmental meeting. A setting of legendary divisiveness for the fruition of Howard's master plan. But with Professor Marvin a reluctant combatant and Howard's varied extra-mural activities under novel surveillance, the inevitability of the plot is no longer totally in the author's hands.