Reviews progress and prospects in just three major areas with particular reference to work by UK University groups using the SERC Central Laser Facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. (i) Laser driven implosions, which are used to create dense high pressure plasmas and which are the basis of ideas for inertially confined thermonuclear fusion. (ii) New applications of uniquely bright X-ray emission from laser produced plasmas for nanosecond time resolved EXAFS, X-ray diffraction etc. (iii) X-ray laser research based on laser produced plasmas as the amplifying media.