Obsessive collectors, a city's worth of small flats, bereavement, divorce and a fad for minimalism have all contributed to an explosion in demand for places to keep spare clobber. Kate Worsley unlocks the strange and very secret world of mini-storage

SPORT ON TV

RAILTRACK'S involvement in the rescue plan for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link was approved overwhelmingly yesterday by the track and signalling group's investors. Railtrack has agreed an option to buy the development rights for the land around London's King Cross and Stratford stations with London & Continental Railways, the consortium behind the rail link.

Sir: David Aaronovitch judges the character of a nation - Scotland - on the basis of the views of a single individual who seems to have upset him. If I were to be accosted by a ranting bag-lady in King's Cross, or a National Front skinhead in Deptford, I would not assume that they were representative of the English race.

Dana Rubin looks at prospects for the commercial regeneration of King's Cross as the Channel tunnel fast rail link runs into trouble

Like many of the vulnerable people spending cold nights on its pavements and in its doorways, King's Cross has effectively lost its identity. Formerly known as Battle Bridge, its current name refers to a short-lived monument to George IV erected in 1836 at the junction of Gray's Inn Road and Euston Road, but demolished nine years later in a road-widening scheme. Property developers of the time were keen to rename Battle Bridge which had become "a haunt of thieves and murderers" and seized the strange folly as their own, thus ousting the proposed "Boudicea's Cross" (a reference to a battle falsely thought to have been fought here between the warrior queen and the Romans) from underground maps of the future.

SYDNEY

Javier de Frutos is famous for dancing with his kit off, but that's only funny once. As his latest piece, `Grass', shows, he still has a lot more to reveal

Gritty, urban living - complete with graffiti and discarded syringes - has become a hit with homebuyers, adding value to apartment blocks in neighbourhoods once viewed as the roughest in town.

Government plans for company directors to face charges of "corporate killing" were confirmed yesterday by Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, who said that those whose criminal negligence caused the deaths of innocent people should not escape punishment.

No 194: NEWS OF THE WORLD

Conferences: Birmingham wants to block a rival centre in London

A giant grain warehouse could replace the millennium dome as the site of a convention centre for London.

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