Mailer, 82, has handed over documents weighing almost nine tonnes and ranging from war letters he wrote to his first wife, Beatrice Silverman, which formed the basis for his first published novel, The Naked and the Dead, to dog identification tags, sales receipts and cancelled cheques.

Hemant Lakhani, 69, a former clothing merchant from Hendon, north London, was found guilty of all five charges he faced, including attempting to provide material support to terrorists and the unlawful brokering of foreign defence articles. The offences carry a maximum sentence of 67 years in prison and fines of up to $2.5m (£1.3m).

It is a trip from the constituency with the lowest proportion of ethnic minority voters in England to the one with the highest that reveals not only the uneven range of Britain's physical landscape, but its racial landscape too.

So Herold joined the army. "The army offered me a better life," he says. It was his passport out of the ghetto. He signed up in September 2000, "to check it out". "I didn't really expect to be in a war before I joined, but when Bush came to office, I knew there would be one."

The UN security council was expected to back a resolution authorising the prosecution of Sudanese war crimes suspects by the court in a case that could prove crucial to establishing the court's legitimacy.

News of her death prompted wailing and praying from supporters of her parents, who wanted to keep her alive, as both the US president, George Bush, and the Vatican expressed their concern at the circumstances of Ms Schiavo's death.