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THE Newcastle school, like most others, was established after the second world war to provide full‐time education in librarianship as an alternative to the part‐time system which until 1946 was the only one available to the majority of librarians. At first most of the students were returning servicemen whose library careers had been interrupted by the war and they were followed by students direct from libraries, universities and schools. From a handful of students and one full‐time member of staff in the first year the school has grown steadily until there were 53 students and five staff during the session 1962–3 which was the last course held for the Registration Examination.

This is a brief study of the character, and the professional career, of one of the most spectacular and prolific of all the huge medley of book‐publishers in Victorian London. George Smith is perhaps today somewhat overshadowed by other famous names. Nevertheless, in 1944, the Cambridge historian, G.M. Trevelyan, singled him from the rest: as the publisher of the monumental Dictionary of National Biography. As the nineteenth century’s cult of printed books inevitably now recedes in favour of information technology, perhaps the time is ripe for this succinct evaluation of an extraordinary publisher from Victorian times who promoted not only works by Leslie Stephen, Thackeray, and many other literary men but particularly works by women‐novelists, such as Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Gaskell, despite the fact that he was far from being a “feminist”, in our own contemporary sense.

Against the backdrop of the Financial Services Authority's Retail Distribution Review, this study aims to present an assessment of the potential development of a UK personal financial advising profession. The development of a profession dedicated to providing financial advice is critically discussed by assessing a range of regulatory and industry views.

The study indicates both a critical literature review and survey of retail financial services planning advisors. The critical literature review considers the market failures which surround the provision of financial planning advice in the UK. A survey of professionally qualified personal financial planning advisers ascertains perceptions of developments to the current regulatory framework to accommodate a more professionally based system of financial advice.

It is reported that a conflict between the current regulatory system and the traditional liberal model of the professions exist. This conflict inhibits the development of a financial services advising profession. Survey evidence collected from professionally qualified financial planning advisors bears out this perspective.

Two key research implications emerge from this study. First, the development of a professional model of financial planning advising appears to be inhibited by the current regulatory system. Secondly, current regulation of financial services sales through a market mechanism appears to limit access to financial planning advice.

The study raises two key practical implications. First, the current system of regulating financial sales, appears to exclude a substantial segment of the population from access to professional financial planning services. Secondly, the development of a profession and increasing professional behaviour in retail financial services sales conflicts with the current model of regulation.

This research paper both reviews the wider arguments surrounding the regulation of retail financial services sales and forwards new evidence as to the attitudes of professionally qualified financial advisors towards regulatory change. This has importance in clarifying a number of the key policy concerns in the regulation of financial services sales.

The provisions of the Fertilisers and Feeding Stuffs Act, 1926, which came into force on July 1st, are based upon the recommendations of two committees which sat during 1923–25, the first of which suggested the general lines of the Act, while the second prepared the schedules of articles coming within its scope. Although the Act received Royal Assent in December, 1926, it has not been practicable to bring it into operation until the regulations governing such matters as methods of sampling and analysis, methods of marking parcels, and limits of variation, had been prepared and published. These regulations were published in draft form in February, 1928, and in their final form during May. The general purpose of the Act, like that of the Act of 1906 which it repeals, is to provide civil remedies in cases of misdescription of, and to prevent fraud in, fertilisers and feeding stuffs. Its scope is defined by means of schedules which may be extended or varied, whenever the need arises, by regulations. One of the principal objects in replacing the Act of 1906 by new legislation was to separate, as far as possible, civil proceedings and criminal proceedings, in order to encourage farmers to exercise their civil rights without involving their suppliers in police court proceedings. The “civil provisions” of the Act are those which enact that buyers of the fertilisers and feeding stuffs in common use shall be furnished with a warranty covering certain important points, and which, further, afford them the means of testing these warranties with a view to formulating a claim where they are not fulfilled. The first requirement of the Act is that every person who sells for use as a fertiliser or as a feeding stuff for cattle or poultry any article included in either the First or the Second Schedule to the Act shall give the purchaser a written statement (called the “ statutory statement”) showing :—

IT IS A HUNDRED YEARS AGO on November 12th since Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly at the age of fifty‐five. She had not begun to write seriously until she was nearly forty, but during those fifteen years wrote seven major novels, a biography and many short stories. Her premature death was a deprivation to English literature and innumerable characters with whom her mind teemed were never brought to life to add to the host of friends that readers of her books find in her pages.

MANCHESTER, like most of our provincial cities, is undergoing a transformation as its grimy Victorian buildings crumble beneath the demolition squads. In their place rise faceless blocks of offices and shops, whose glass and concrete soon lose their early gleam and smoothness and become streaked and shabby. They do not mature with the same charm as the brickwork and the carved and moulded stonework of the buildings they replace, for in spite of its reputation for ugliness and the accepted view of a drab city of umbrella‐carrying citizens and shawl‐clad and clog‐footed millworkers, there was an aura of romance about the older Manchester, something that prompted a man who was not a native of the city, Howard Spring, to write:

THE question of the advisability of exercising a censorship over literature has been much before the public of late, and probably many librarians have realised how closely the disputed question affects their own profession.