Mr Philpott was earlier praised by police for his 'valiant' attempts to rescuehis sleeping children

Joe Orton's famous sex farce is the latest addition to theatreland's retro craze. Despite being funny and well acted, it's jokes are showing their age

A fatal fire that killed six children from the same family was deliberately started by someone pouring a "substantial" amount of petrol through the letter box and lighting it, police said today.

Father of 17 had allegedly received death threats and had been vilified by tabloids for his lifestyle

Not quite up to this month’s London Marathon? Try one of the shorter – or sillier – races in our selection

Tonight; a low-ceilinged, Lilliputian basement in a pub off Hackney Road. Tomorrow night; a high-ceilinged, velvet-clad hyper-venue in Mornington Crescent with a capacity nearing 2,500.

David Eldridge's In Basildon is a gloriously rich, humorous, agonising and politically provocative play, but it has been staged by the Royal Court's artistic director, Dominic Cooke, in a bafflingly peculiar, not to say, counterproductive way.

The landlord of Canary Wharf ushered in a new phase in the evolution of its sprawling estate today with a land deal which could eventually bring another 20,000 workers to London's Docklands.

A taxi driver who murdered his partner, her sister and her sister's daughter before shooting himself in a New Year's Day killing spree at the family home held licences for six weapons and had been known to police for three years after he threatened to harm himself.

A man who shot himself after killing three women on New Year's Day was a licensed holder of firearms, it has emerged.

The High Court has reserved its decision on the City of London Corporation's bid to evict anti-capitalist protesters from outside St Paul's Cathedral.

A sacked police inspector killed his wife and six-year-old daughter and seriously injured his two other children in a frenzied knife attack before killing himself.

JG Ballard's rather drab semi-detached home in Shepperton is inextricably linked with the life of one of post-war fiction's greatest talents. Many of the country's best writers, often Ballard's disciples, visited the author during the 49 years that he lived in this sleepy suburb, where he crafted the dystopian thrillers Crash and Cocaine Nights.

A man was being questioned on suspicion of attempted murder tonight after a 14-year-old girl was stabbed near the gates of her school in an attack witnessed by other pupils.