She was only a farmer's daughter, but ...

Surgeons in the United States have for the first time restored movement to the previously paralysed hand of a 71-year-old man injured in a car incident by essentially splicing a defunct nerve with a working one in his upper arm, according to a report released yesterday in the Journal of Neurosurgery.

Portrait of a quiet genius who revolutionised our understanding of the ancient world.

It was hard yesterday to find anyone quite sure about the meaning of Tony Blair “re-engaging” in UK politics, especially as he has already begun to do so quietly.

Adolf Hitler was surprisingly keen to return to the front line after being injured in the First World War, a recently-discovered postcard suggests.

A dozen poets were given anonymous scents from which they had to write a poem. Meanwhile, six perfumers were asked to come up with a new fragrance inspired by a poem.

Sweet Billy Pilgrim's follow-up to 2009's Mercury-nominated Twice Born Men finds songwriter Tim Elsenburg making great strides forward with an ambitious cycle of songs about identity and history.

The president of the National Association of Head Teachers is right that the Government is in danger of returning to the bad old days when schools focused more on tests and league tables than on pupils' needs.

David Hare and Terence Rattigan have a lot in common, apart from their public schools and knighthoods.

Every year, on his birthday, the children of John Clare Primary School in the village of Helpston in Cambridgeshire, lay special midsummer cushions around the gravestone of their most famous son. But the pub over the road, where the great peasant poet was laid out before his burial, has traditionally been off limits, at least until now. Barry Sheerman, the Labour MP for Huddersfield, and the John Clare Trust of which he is the chair, have bought the large Exeter Arms, and plan to turn it into an educational centre.

Most universities are forced to put new undergraduates through remedial courses to give them the basic skills they need, a conference will be told today.

Tonino Guerra worked with many of the major Italian directors, helping the industry move from neo-realism to embrace figures as different as the coolly modernist Antonioni and the extravagantly baroque Fellini. Outside Italy he was a close associate of Tarkovsky and Angelopoulos, and was nominated for an Oscar three times.

Panel says half a million UK families need support, and calls for penalties for schools that fail children

A report looking into the causes of last year’s riots has identified “500,000 forgotten families,” where a lack of support and opportunities led to a widespread sense of hopelessness among young people.