5 years ago

Bookshops across the country stayed open into the early hours and held one-off events to allow devoted Harper Lee fans the chance to get their hands on her much-anticipated follow-up to To Kill A Mockingbird. The new novel, Go Set A Watchman, is out today and is already a guaranteed best-seller as the follow-up to Lee’s 1960 book about a rape trial in the racially-divided deep south of the US. Waterstones in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street opened at midnight.

10 years ago

Tony Blair branded Gordon Brown “mad, bad, dangerous and beyond redemption” as their long-standing leadership feud reached boiling point, according to the latest instalment of Peter Mandelson’s memoirs.

Mandelson, pictured, describes in graphic terms the deterioration in relations between the two men at the heart of New Labour after Blair reneged on a promise to his then Chancellor to stand down ahead of the 2003 General Election.

25 years ago

The Duchess of York looks set to share in a marketing bonanza after the sale of her Budgie helicopter cartoon character to US television. The duchess, who has complained that she was having a hard time managing as a single mother, could net part of an estimated £300m in earnings over five years from the lucrative US market in Budgie toys, T-shirts and other spin-offs. It follows the signing yesterday of an £813,000 deal between Sleepy Kids plc and the FOX children’s network to screen the show.

50 years ago

Northern Ireland’s weekend of peace was shattered last night by an explosion which destroyed a hotel in the Antrim Road district of Belfast. The explosion, which was meant to trigger off an incendiary device, was the first major incident of the week-end and happened as a patrolling King’s Own Scottish Borderers’ jeep was passing. Within minutes hundreds of people gathered to watch firemen tackle the blaze in the Elsinore Hotel, which is owned by two Catholic brothers who are on holiday.

100 years ago

Robert M. Dickson (4), son of John Dickson, shipwright, 23 Trafalgar Street, Greenock, was instantaneously killed yesterday afternoon by being run over by a large commercial motor lorry. The boy, along with Alexander Gray (3) was coming down the steep decline in Trafalgar Street on a small tricycle, when the machine ran underneath the lorry which was passing along Roxburgh Street. One of the wheels of the motor passed over Dickson’s head. Grey sustained severe injuries.