World snooker No 8 Stephen Lee has "a case to answer", the World Professional Snooker and Billiards Association has decided after an investigation into suspicious betting. Lee, 38, insists he is innocent.

Dame Helen Mirren has admitted to having misgivings about playing the Queen for a second time. The actress's 2006 Oscar-winning role as The Queen will be reprised in a West End play The Audience, which opens in February.

Italy coach Cesare Prandelli says he toyed with the idea of dropping Mario Balotelli from his squad for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers against Armenia and Denmark after being left “hurt” by the Manchester City striker's decision to schedule laser eye surgery during the last international break.

A sailor has been reunited with his baby daughter after spending more than seven months at sea on board a Royal Navy mine hunter.

The first major study of the foreign language skills of Europe's teenagers confirmed what we all feared yesterday – we are the language dunces of the Continent. The survey of 16 nations – by the European Commission – revealed England was bottom in the rankings on reading, writing and listening.

Tony Buckingham had already told alternate skipper Kevin Sproul to take the crew out to a celebration dinner for their three wins and two seconds start to the Soto 40 grand prix in Barcelona, and Sproul’s way of saying thank you included winning the event in Ngoni with a race to spare after another win and a second on today.

Less than £200... Soak up the culture in Barcelona on a two-night break for £173pp. The deal includes easyJet flights from Gatwick on 19 May and stylish accommodation with breakfast at the Rafaelhoteles Badalona, close to Montjuic. Lastminute.com

A juror has been jailed for 56 days after she said she was too sick to attend court and promptly jetted off on a two week holiday to Malta.

Few political personalities can look back at the past with as much satisfaction as Vincent Tabone.

In the “mostly sun-filled days” of summer 1944, two children, nine-year-old David and his younger sister Sarah, are holidaying with their grandparents in the country near Peterborough. Their mother should have come but has stayed behind, leaving the pair at a loose end, irritable. Back in Leicestershire, David had his pal Robin, his choir practice, the Fox gang, and his GI friend, Jay Krassner from Gary, Indiana, drummer in a swing band.

Rural retreat

Hand Picked Hotels has today launched a promotion across its group of 18 luxury retreats dotted throughout the British Isles. The deal includes an overnight stay, breakfast and dinner with a glass of champagne and canapés for £145 per couple. It is being offered for stays taken between 1 February and 18 March; properties range from the 18th-century Buxted Park Hotel in East Sussex to Crathorne Hall Hotel, a country manor house overlooking the Yorkshire Moors. Handpickedhotels.co.uk

High winds have beached a cargo ship off France's Atlantic coast and some of the 220 tons of fuel in its hold is leaking, threatening a local beach.

Jill Dawson's vivid seventh novel is the picaresque tale of the childhood and later career of Queenie Dove, a female criminal. Born in 1933, Queenie flowers as a con artist and thief in the fragile new wealth and glamour of late 1950s and early 1960s London, finding her apotheosis as one of the never-traced participants in the Great Train Robbery of 1963.

In 2002, 24 year-old Joseph Calleja made his UK debut in Welsh National Opera's Oval Office staging of Rigoletto.