More than 6,500 police officers were patrolling the streets for the second day of the Notting Hill Carnival today as Scotland Yard continued its unprecedented security operation just weeks after the riots.

Yes

By Harriet Walker

I am always stunned by the negative press that Carnival receives.

Attitudes to Europe's biggest street party are divided, with wealthy residents nervous after the riots

A Slice of Britain: With Notting Hill just a week away, London's Caribbean community turns out for a smaller, but no less vibrant, celebration

A twenty-six-year-old man and a teenager were remanded in custody yesterday after appearing in court charged with the murders of three men who were hit by a car during riots in Birmingham last week.

With the attention of the British press and public concentrated on the committee hearings at Portcullis House over the phone-hacking scandal, Downing Street chose yesterday to publish the salaries of ministerial special advisers.

Stay put? Over-55s development? Or equity release? Chiara Cavaglieri looks at the options, and their pitfalls, for homeowning retirees

As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so the quality of a restaurant is in the experience of the diner. Which is why any attempt to rank the world's best restaurants is bound to produce as much disappointment as elation – not just among contenders, but among those who follow the rankings to the number. The winners are the proprietors whose top places guarantee tables fully booked for years ahead.

Twenty thousand people handed out a record number of tomes across the country for the first World Book Night

Got a text from Ben yesterday, telling me that I had been offensive to Prince Harry in Boujis after our B52 session. I couldn’t remember a word of it, but Ben claims I took his seat in a booth and then when he came back started going “all ginger on his arse”. (Ben’s words).

Lucy Bailey made her name with sizzling theatrical adaptations of steamy movies (Baby Doll and The Postman Always Rings Twice). In a piquant twist to that manoeuvre, she now presents the UK premiere of one of the six stage plays written by the Marxist film director Pier Paolo Pasolini. Her arresting production of Fabrication (Affabulazione, 1975) launches The Print Room, an attractive 80-seater venue created from a warehouse in Notting Hill.

A new theatre opened this week in West London's Notting Hill. The Print Room is co-founded by theatre director Lucy Bailey, who directs the UK premiere of Italian film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolini's stage play Fabrication.

The Lib Dem conference proved that some politicians still represent more than themselves, while people power also informs a new actuality TV soap

For many years Frank Critchlow played a central role in the Notting Hill's black community. He set up the Mangrove Restaurant, the first black restaurant in "the Grove". This apparently innocuous activity set him on a collision course with the local police, who equated black radicalism with criminality. Police persecution of the Mangrove became emblematic of the experience of the black community at large, and Critchlow's struggle brought the British Black Power movement its first major victory.