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Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
In a word - No.
Should you have the right to, say Zane Grey's post 1923 works that are still under copyright in the US but not the UK? Or should you be paying royalties? If Berne is about reciprocity...
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It's not about reciprocity in the sense that you're using it above.
The Berne convention says that works published in country "A" should receive the same protection in country "B" that works published in country "B" do,
not the same protection that works published in country "A" do.
Thus, to use your example above, all of Zane Gray's works are in the public domain in the UK because UK law says that any work whose author died more than 70 years ago in in the public domain, and Zane Gray died in 1939, which is more than 70 years ago. ie, Mr Gray's works get the same copyright protection (or, in this case, get placed in the public domain) as works published in the UK do.
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Under such a circumstance, what is the "right thing"? What was the "right thing" when the UK went from life + 50 to life + 70, and those items (such as Kipling) in the gap went back into copyright?
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What I believe happened in the UK, when copyright law was extended from +50 to +70, and works which had previously been in the public domain re-entered copyright, was that everyone who was commercially exploiting such works had to pay a fee to the copyright holder for the right to continue exploiting those works, but the copyright holder was not allowed to refuse permission for the continued usage. I don't know if that's the "right thing" or not, but it seems like a reasonable compromise. Australia chose a different solution - they said that everything that's in the public domain now stays there, but there's a 20 year hiatus in new work entering the public domain until life+70 "catches up".