A rare copy of the first ever atlas of England and Wales has sold for more than £100,000 at auction. Christopher Saxton was a Yorkshire-born surveyor who is known as the ‘father of English cartography’. And in the 1570s he spent seven years travelling around England and Wales for Thomas Seckford, who was the master of requests to Queen Elizabeth. His maps were engraved and printed between 1574 and 1578 and were first issued in atlas form in 1579. This...

Philip Hammond will present the Budget next week amidst new global figures that show the UK is now bottom of the growth league among major economies in Europe and North America. The data on GDP up to Q3 2017 puts Britain significantly behind its peers, dropping below Belgium, Italy and France. The UK economy expanded by just 0.4 per cent in the third quarter of this year, new early estimates from the Office for National Statistics show, which brings the year-on-year...

VPC Speciality Lending invests more in Borro - Victory Park Capital, VPC Speciality Lending's investment manager has decided that the funds that it runs will take a majority equity stake in Borro. Through this transaction, VPC Speciality Lending will end up owning approximately 49% of Borro. The remaining 51% of the equity will be held by other vehicles managed by Victory Park Capital and Borro's senior management team. VPC Speciality Lending will keep its outstanding senior secured debt position of approximately GBP32 million,...

A pervert who sexually assaulted and exposed himself to young women over an 18 month rampage was finally caught - when he flashed an off-duty police officer. Kemil Dungyov exposed himself to a woman in the alleyway and sexually assaulted another woman in the same alleyway and committed an attempted rape. The 26-year-old was linked to six offences between September 2015 and April this year. Dungyov was finally caught when he exposed himself to an off-duty officer in the early...

The harsh austerity plan rolled out under consecutive Conservative governments has been linked to 120,000 deaths in Britain. According to a damning landmark study there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020. The study, published in BMJ Open today, identified that mortality rates in the UK had declined...

Perhaps the best thing to come out of the US election was comic and impressionist Peter Serafinowicz’s Sassy Trump. Voicing Donald Trump’s actual words – only voiced “0.001% more catty” –  helped us appreciate quite how shockingly barmy the flamboyant reality TV star’s outrageous ramblings really are. (Watch a fabulous example below.) And now audio visual remixing wizard Eclectic Method has remixed and cut up Peter Serafiowicz’s Sassy Trump videos into one bizarre musical tirade - and remember these are all actually...

Carole Cadwalladr more than any other journalist has pursued the sinister funnel of money and connections between fixers involved in the Trump and Brexit campaigns, including Leave.EU, Ukip and their backer Arron Banks. She has written about Russian meddling and fake social media accounts spreading disinformation just before the Brexit vote - a story finally picked up by the rest of the media. Her articles about Cambridge Analytica LLC and SCL Elections Limited bought by Robert Mercer the secretive hedge fund billionaire and...

Listen to Julie Byrne if you like: Joni Mitchell, Laura Marling, Nadia Reid, Patti Smith, Carole King, Bob Dylan, Richard Hawley, Mark Chapman  Julie Byrne has an instantly mesmerising stage presence. Before her first song, she gives a brief introduction - in her familiar husky, peaceful tone - and we could just as well be about to partake in a guided meditation. Everything about her is therapeutic – from her soft melodies and gentle mannerisms, to the way she picks...

Greggs the bakers have had to apologise profusely for a tongue-in-cheek nativity scene in a promotional photo for its first ever advent calendar with a sausage roll in the place of baby Jesus. “We’re really sorry to have caused any offence, this was never our intention,” the bakers apologised, though they said they would not be withdrawing their advent calendar. But an apology wouldn’t suffice for critics from the The UK Evangelical Alliance who accused Greggs of a “manufacturing a scandal...