The country was the breakaway Republic of Biafra, which seceded from Nigeria in 1967, in response to the continuing persecution of the Igbo people.

We all deserve a dignified send-off. Instead, this occasion was hijacked and turned into a state-endorsed celebration of a legacy bitterly detested by millions

At the start the new Governor will have Number 10 on side, writes Sean O’Grady

A good old traditional kings-and-queens canter through English history, from the withdrawal of the Romans in 410, to the election of the coalition in 2010.

Notebook

Few – very few – politicians achieve the status that Jack Ashley did. Ashley, who has died aged 89, became a beacon for the disabled, and both in the Commons and the Lords he was the most significant British politician of the last 40 years not to have held ministerial office.

Former minister Margaret Hodge has finally found her vocation: making life a misery for civil servants who don't pull their weight. Oliver Wright meets Whitehall's nemesis

Westminster Abbey is to honour two former prime ministers from the 1970s with memorial stones.

Any fears that the ninth Tindersticks album would be as lazy as its title (as though they couldn't be bothered to think of a suitable adjective) are dispelled immediately by the stunning nine-minute opener "Chocolate", a spoken-word memoir about student bedsit life and falling in love.

Taking over as producer of one of television's most memorable spy dramas, Callan, presented Reginald Collin with an enviable dilemma. "Our problem is that this latest series has been fantastically successful," he told TV Times in 1969. "A year ago, we felt that this would be the last of it. Now we are not so sure."

In the UK, referendums are rarely held. Quite a few are offered at some distant point in the future, but governments only call them when they are confident they will win. This is what makes the drama over a referendum for Scottish independence so explosive. Referendums here are not about leaders discovering a sudden passion for direct forms of democracy. Usually they are about leaders seizing control of controversial policies.

Nothing brightens a gloomy Sabbath morn like Danny Alexander, and the Treasury's Chief Secretary was on cracking form when chatting with Superinjunction Marr's stand-in Jeremy Vine on BBC1. For all that, I was alarmed by Danny's thoughts on contributing up to £40bn to the IMF. What we credulous halfwits should know, explained Danny (I paraphrase a soupçon), is that this wouldn't mean actually handing over any cash.