Gordon Brown and George Osborne offered their individual visions of how Britain and the world can recover from the economic crisis yesterday, with the Prime Minister calling for a return to the values of the good society, where banks recommit to their fundamental role.

Though his official biographer tends to deny it, there is a very noticeable gap between Lucian Freud's present style and the way he painted at the outset of his phenomenal career.

Documents detailing Government plans to rule from an underground bunker have been revealed.

Gordon Brown today visited flood-stricken communities in Cumbria hit by the heaviest rainfall since records began.

Universities have been warned to expect heavy cuts next year as the head of their funding body told them that the “golden age” of rising budgets was over.

At university, I had this flatmate, a philosophy student, who found minor celebrity for his ability to strawpedo bottles of cheap wine. Strawpedo? Urbandictionary.com defines it as “the act of downing a bottle of drink through the use of a straw — often followed by physical convulsions and sickness”. And circa 2002, it seemed a fun way to break up the ennui of a Tuesday night in Birmingham.

Digital pirates, who for years have tormented the music and film industries, have found a new source of plunder in e-book publishing.

As the people of Cumbria began a massive clean-up operation last night, many were struggling to come to terms with the loss of a respected community policeman who was swept away in swollen flood waters as he went to the aid of stranded motorists.

Conservative plans to grant schools freedom from central control risk bringing the creationist doctrines of a “Religious Right” into the classroom, the Government warned last night.

Aesthetically, 2009 has been what the fashion mags call bracing.

As engineers struggled to inspect the battered bridges of Cumbria, experts warned yesterday that extreme weather would push Britain’s ageing transport infrastructure to the limits with increasing frequency.

It is an unpredictable business, selling off the family silver. When the family possessions of the late Duke of Kent were auctioned in London yesterday, there were two things of which one could be fairly certain: that there would be a huge interest in the sale and much speculation about why the Duke’s heirs — who include Prince Michael of Kent — needed to mount what has been described as the Royal Family’s car boot sale.

The adolescent dreams of thousands of teenage girls were fulfilled yesterday as the latest Twilight film arrived on British screens, accompanied by an unprecedented merchandising blitz.

Britain faces being battered by storms well into next month. The only comfort is that the Met Office believes that a slight shift in wind direction next week will bring cooler air, which means that rainfalls will diminish. But with the ground saturated and so many rivers running high, the slightest extra rainfall could trigger flooding in more regions.

It is ten years since kittens were relegated to an unfashionable hinterland — the shoe choice of the especially drab politician’s Wag. And yet, judging by the catwalk shows for spring 2010, the most pointless shoe design of all time is being cued up for a revival.

On a Sussex hillside one breezy morning, a flock of more than a hundred sheep burp and waddle, chewing dry grass, some trailing bits of bramble in their fleece. Norman Watson, a retired IT manager, checks them for illness, and secures the electric fence that protects them from predators.

E-mails allegedly written by some of the world’s leading climate scientists have been stolen by hackers and published on websites run by climate change sceptics.

The chief of the Opec oil cartel said that oil-producing countries should be compensated for lost revenues if UN climate talks in Copenhagen next month reach a deal that cuts the use of oil.

The torrential rains that swept Cumbria brought back memories for Sue Bunce of what happened to her two years ago. Speaking from her newly renovated home in Tewkesbury, she said that even now rain worries her. “It does make me anxious when the weather’s a bit stormy,” she said. “You don’t know what little event is going to trigger emotions.”

Yesterday was the 100th time that the small Wiltshire town of Wootton Bassett has fallen silent as the bodies of servicemen killed in Afghanistan passed along the High Street.