Alford, who also appeared in Grange Hill, was jailed for eight and a half years in January for sexually assaulting two girls

An investigation has been launched into the death of the actor John Alford after he died in prison two months into a sentence for sexually assaulting two teenage girls.

Alford, 54, was jailed for eight and a half years in January after he was found guilty of the assaults, which occurred during a party at a friend’s home.

First of the trusts, formed with 12 people in a Norfolk pub in 1926, buys swath of farmland to restore to nature

The place where Norton Wood once stood is now a vast field of decaying wheat stubble. The ancient wood was grubbed up during the second world war. No trace of it remains – on the surface, at least. This ghost in the landscape lives on only in the name of the local village: Wood Norton.

But trees will soon be bursting upwards again and the wood will regrow after Norfolk Wildlife Trust celebrated its 100th birthday by buying a swath of farmland to revive for nature.

Exclusive: Pensthorpe was believed to be home to just one individual but pair have been filmed grooming each other

No one knows where they came from or how they ended up in Norfolk. But one thing is certain: now, there are two of them.

Until last week, experts believed there was only one wild beaver living in Pensthorpe nature reserve, about 20 miles outside Norwich. But just in time for Valentine’s Day, two were caught on camera going for a late-night swim together and grooming each other by the riverbank.

Bereaved relatives say delays over risks at village churchyards are causing distress and call for council action

Families of people buried in graves vulnerable to coastal erosion say indecision over how to tackle the problem is causing them avoidable anguish about the final resting places of their loved ones.

North Norfolk district council (NNDC) has identified three church graveyards in the villages of Happisburgh, Trimingham, and Mundesley as being at risk of being engulfed by the sea in the coming decades.

When BT earmarked the kiosk for closure in January, Derek Harris began to campaign. The fight gave him purpose at a difficult time in his life

• ‘I don’t want it to die’: one man’s battle to save the last phone box in his village

The caller display flashes up: “Derek in the K6” it reads. On the line is Derek Harris, ringing from the red phone box he saved for his village. When he saw, on the agenda for the parish council meeting, that BT had earmarked it for closure, Harris knew he had to fight it. “It’s fighting for what is valuable, cherished,” he told me when I went to meet him in February, sitting over coffee in a cafe near Sharrington, the Norfolk village that has been his home for more than 50 years, and the phone box for longer. It’s a K6, for Kiosk No 6, designed in 1935 by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.

For a few weeks, Harris, then 89, became a media star. One of the criteria for keeping a phone box in use is that at least 52 calls have to be made from it in a year (fewer than 10 had been made in 2024). As the campaign picked up speed, one day a queue of people made more than 230 calls from the K6. Harris sparked a national conversation about the continuing need for kiosks in an age of mobiles. Behind the scenes, he was a tenacious activist, sending constant emails to his MP, councillors, and of course, BT. Some of them included photographs he had taken of BT vans whose engineers were working nearby, as proof the phone box could be easily maintained. In March, BT decided to reverse its decision.

As part of the Guardian’s Against the tide series, readers aged 18 to 30 share what they love about living in their coastal town, the challenges and why they often choose to leave

Megan, a 24-year-old from the Isle of Wight, is very familiar with saying goodbye. She decided university wasn’t for her and remembers how, one by one, she waved off her friends who left the island to study. Many never came back.

The first ever mass deployment of mother reef bricks aims to rebuild habitats – and could reshape the North Sea

Allie Wharf’s career unfolded amid conflict. As a senior foreign producer for Newsnight, she reported on Iraq and Afghanistan. Just two years ago, she was filming mass graves in Ukraine.

But burnt out by wars, and after a detour farming ducks in Tanzania, Wharf has now settled on the quiet north Norfolk coast. Here, alongside her life and business partner, Willie Athill, she has embarked on a different kind of mission: the creation of Europe’s largest natural oyster reef.