Martin Amis, son of Kingsley Amis, publishes his first novel, The Rachel Papers

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is deported from the USSR to West Germany for publishing The Gulag Archipelago

Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell dance together in the premiere of Kenneth MacMillan's Manon

British physicist Stephen Hawking describes how black holes can emit radiation, a process now known as 'Hawking radiation'

A military coup in Portugal ends four decades of Salazar's and Caetano's dictatorial New State

Willy Brandt resigns and is succeeded by Helmut Schmidt, as leader of the SDP and chancellor of Germany

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing defeats François Mitterrand in the French presidential election

Turkish troops invade and occupy northeast Cyprus, causing the island to be divided for decades to come

Soviet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov defects from the Kirov company while on tour in Canada

Internment is ended in Ulster after the Gardiner Report states that it brings the law into disrepute

Richard Burton marries Elizabeth Taylor for the second time, five years after divorcing

Anatoly Karpov becomes world chess champion by default when Bobby Fischer fails to defend his title

The first series of Fawlty Towers, co-written by and starring John Cleese, is broadcast on British TV

David Hockney begins a new career as a set designer, with The Rake's Progress by Stravinksky at Glyndebourne

Astronauts Tom Stafford and Aleksei Leonov shake hands when their Apollo and Soyuz craft successfully dock in space

Czech choreographer Jiri Kylián becomes director of the Netherlands Dance Theatre in The Hague

Excavation of the 5200-year-old passage grave at Newgrange in Ireland is completed

Austrian racing driver Niki Lauda wins the first of three Formula One world championship titles

The British group the Sex Pistols launch punk rock, with their first gig at St Martin's School of Art in London

Franco dies and is succeeded as Spanish head of state by Juan Carlos, heir to the Bourbon throne

English author Ruth Prawer Jhabwala wins the Booker Prize with her novel Heat and Dust

Portugal adopts a democratic constitution after 43 years of dicatorship

Frederick Ashton creates a ballet based on Turgenev's play A Month in the Country, to music by Chopin

Polish composer Henryk Górecki completes his Third Symphony

Pierre Boulez establishes in Paris IRCAM, an advanced institute for research into the techniques of modern music