The Real IRA kills 26 people and injures about 200 with a bomb planted in Omagh, in northern Ireland

Augusto Pinochet, visiting Britain from Chile for medical treatment, is arrested on an extradition request from a Spanish judge

Libya hands over, for trial in the Hague, two men suspected of causing the Lockerbie disaster of 1988

Chromosome 22 becomes the first human genome to be fully sequenced, at the Sanger Institute in Cambridge, England

The new Northern Ireland Assembly is suspended because of IRA failure to decommission arms

The British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, judges Augusto Pinochet mentally incapable to stand trial and returns him to Chile

The Amber Spyglass completes Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials

The Scottish Court in the Netherlands convicts a Libyan, Al-Megrahi, of responsibility for the Pan-Am Lockerbie bomb

Tony Blair leads Britain's Labour party in a second successive election victory, with a majority only marginally reduced from 179 to 167

Dial House becomes the home of the Bishop of Kensington

In his novel Atonement Ian McEwan follows the disasters resulting from a child's mistaken identity of a supposed rapist , through to the child's attempt, more than sixty years later, at atonement

InAusterlitz W.G. Sebald follows the painful quest of a Czech Jew, brought to England in 1939 on a Kindertransport, to discover the history of his immediate family

UK scientist David Kelly commits suicide, apparently for reasons linked with the Iraq War

The last three Concorde airliners to carry fare-paying passengers land within a space of five minutes at Heathrow

Ian Paisley's hard-line Democratic Unionist Party wins in elections to the suspended Northern Ireland Assembly

Lord Hutton publishes his report into the circumstances leading up to the suicide of Dr David Kelly

Armed robbers, suspected of links with the IRA, steal more than £25 million from the Northern Bank in Belfast

The Prince of Wales marries Camilla Parker Bowles, subsequently to be known as the Duchess of Cornwall

Tony Blair wins the Labour party an unprecedented third successive term, but with a majority reduced from 167 to 66

Four English suicide bombers cause 52 deaths on London's transport system during the morning rush hour

A Brazilian citizen, Jean Charles de Menezes, is killed on the London underground by police mistaking him for a terrorist

The Provisional IRA announces a formal end to armed conflict and orders units to dump all their weapons

David Cameron wins the Tory leadership election, succeeding Michael Howard as the Leader of the Opposition in Britain

Queen Elizabeth II, having been on the throne for 63 years, 217 days, becomes the longest-reigning British monarch, surpassing the reign of Queen Victoria

British Labour MP Jo Cox is murdered in Birstall, West Yorkshire