Families

Jane Merrick was dressed in ready-to-sew Clothkits throughout her childhood. So when it came to dressing her own daughter, there was one brand she was desperate to track down...

US Outlook: It is as if the US labour market hired a PR team.

One of Britain's most famous seaside attractions, Brighton Pier, has been put up for sale, its owner has disclosed.

On 13 May 1945, Winston Churchill announced to a jubilant nation that the Second World War had come to an end in Europe.

The International Olympic Committee yesterday welcomed the announcement of peace talks in the bitter dispute between the British Olympic Association and London 2012 organisers. The BOA has suspended its legal action against London 2012 and will put a new proposal on the table later this week.

Underground stations lost beneath London's streets could be opened up again in an initiative designed to give them fresh life as concert venues, bars and tourist attractions.

While my once troublesome drinking companion Charlie Sheen has been at pains to assure us all he's "winning" in recent days, it seems Old Father Time is suddenly having a good laugh at his expense. Much like my good self, Sheen's youthful looks have long been at odds with a life of high-profile decadence. Yet, ever since it emerged he was swapping a lucrative career on a top US sitcom for a new vocation as the world's best village idiot, it's been hard not to notice that this once seemingly ageless handsome rogue (45) is looking increasingly frayed at the edges by the day. While one theory doing the rounds suggests his terminated contract with CBS included an all-important "eternal youth" guarantee, the now "sober" Sheen's recent brag that he out-drugged Keith Richards could come back to haunt him – if Charlie keeps ageing at this rate, there's every chance he too could be up for playing Johnny Depp's dishevelled on-screen Dad before the year's out. It's certainly not for me to suggest a hasty return to the vodka and Colombian marching powder.

On 23 October 1942, the battle that Winston Churchill described as 'not the end...not even the beginning of the end, but...perhaps the end of the beginning' began.