  I summarise what lattice methods can contribute to our understanding of the
phenomenology of QCD at large Nc and describe some recent work on the physics
of SU(Nc) gauge theories. These non-perturbative calculations show that there
is indeed a smooth Nc -> infinity limit and that it is achieved by keeping
g.g.Nc fixed, confirming the usual diagrammatic analysis. The lattice
calculations support the crucial assumption that the theory remains linearly
confining at large Nc. Moreover we see explicitly that Nc=3 is `close to'
Nc=infinity for many physical quantities. We comment on the fate of topology
and the deconfining transition at large Nc. We find that multiple confining
strings are strongly bound. The string tensions, K(k), of these k-strings are
close to the M(-theory)QCD-inspired conjecture as well as to `Casimir scaling'
with the most accurate recent calculations favouring the former. We point out
that closed k-strings provide a natural way for non-perturbative effects to
introduce O(1/Nc) corrections into the pure gauge theory, in contradiction to
the conventional diagrammatic expectation.
