Kate Palmer

25 December 2017 It's no ordinary commuter Monday at Euston Station in London. The last train left at 23:00 on Sunday and the passengers are home - but the concourse is busy with people sitting down to a Christmas Day feast. An arrivals board reads: "Special notice: Network Rail invites you to Euston Station. Merry Christmas!" For the first time, the transport hub has become a homeless shelter for 200 people - as one of many public spaces that normally lie empty on Christmas.

By Kate Palmer BBC News "No words of mine can soften the blow. There is one consolation for you - your daughter became unconscious immediately after she was hit, and she passed away perfectly peacefully." This was how Minnie Wood, a 36-year-old matron, comforted the parents of one of her young nurses, Nellie Spindler, who was killed by a shell during the First World War's Battle of Passchendaele in 1917.

US actor Dick Van Dyke has apologised for what he called his "atrocious Cockney accent" in Mary Poppins, more than half a century after he played Bert the chimney sweep in the 1964 film. But the peculiarities of UK accents seem notoriously hard for foreign actors to master - so who also stands out for their bad British delivery? 1. Dick Van Dyke - Bert, Mary Poppins (1964) Van Dyke, who is from the US state of Missouri, said he had been teased for years over his Cockney accent in Mary Poppins.