‘Violence viewing and aggressive behaviour clearly are positively related, not just in our culture but in other western cultures as well. The weight of evidence strongly suggests that observational learning and attitude change induced by television violence are contributing to the positive relation’.

For the fortunate few who participate in College study tours abroad, an added bonus—and a not inconsiderable one at that—is the opportunity to abdicate all responsibility. From the moment of take-off on the way out to the moment of touch-down on the way back, the tour leader takes over as a sort of surrogate father. On this occasion our father, ironically enough, may not have been the youngest among us chronologically speaking, but he was nevertheless the youngest in heart. He was irrepressible, imperturbable and ebullient, and on his, admittedly, broad shoulders fell the onus of caring for a mixed bag of psychiatrists and their spouses, mixed, that is, in terms of age, sex and, in particular, temperament. We, with little respect for his status, chose to call him ‘Cyril’, whereas our Chinese colleagues with their traditional sense of propriety and respect for parental status, gave him his due and saw fit to address him reverentially as, ‘The Honourable Dr Cyril Davies’.

The fourth Forensic Psychiatry Specialist Section Conference of the College was held at Stratford-upon-Avon on 1 and 2 February 1985. The theme was the Homicide Act and the wider context of insanity legislation in theory and in practice. Not difficult to predict that so many differing ‘expert’ opinions would be expressed—a mirror of the ‘ritual dance’ of experts in court perhaps—but not so predictable that the papers should be so clearly expressed and mostly rigorous as they were, and that some degree of consensus should emerge. I shall attempt to summarize parts of the contributions and some of the suggestions made for change.

This Bill had its Third Reading on 19 April 1985. It seeks to increase to life imprisonment the maximum penalty available to the courts in sentencing people convicted of trafficking in Class A drugs, principally heroin and cocaine.