Mat Trewern

1 week ago | bbc.com | Mat Trewern

'We dropped chocolate for children despite orders'Mat TrewernBBCJeff Brown, 99, served as a gunner on a Lancaster Bomber An RAF veteran has described how British aircrew disobeyed orders to air-drop chocolates and sweets for starving Dutch children in the final days of World War Two. Speaking during VE Day commemoration, 99-year-old Jeff Brown recalled his part in Operation Manna, an aid mission to feed millions of people facing famine in the German-occupied Netherlands in May 1945.

2 weeks ago | bbc.co.uk | Jonny Manning |Mat Trewern

Image caption, Arthur Ferguson still plays an active role in the business he started with his wife 70 years ago BBC News, North East and CumbriaA 100-year-old shopkeeper who has been in business for more than seven decades says he may consider retiring "in a year or two". Arthur Ferguson and his wife Cicely turned a former bakery in Millom, Cumbria, into a haberdashery in the 1950s, and since then it has become a steadfast part of the community.

3 weeks ago | bbc.com | Mat Trewern |Ewan Gawne

Turning sewage into the world's strongest materialMat Trewern & Ewan GawneBBCThe technology is using human waste to create fuel and a wonder materialTechnology that can turn sludge from sewage into both hydrogen fuel and the miracle material graphene is being tested in what has been described as a "world first" trial in Manchester. United Utilities is working with British climate tech firm Levidian on the project at its Davyhulme sewage works in Trafford.

3 weeks ago | bbc.com | Mat Trewern |Rumeana Jahangir

Church attacked in explicit graffiti 'hate crime'Mat Trewern and Rumeana JahangirBBCSt James Church in Leyland was sprayed with explicit graffiti ahead of Good Friday servicesA vicar said he is "heartbroken" after obscene graffiti was daubed over nearly 40 gravestones and his church ahead of Good Friday services. Sexually graphic images and expletives were sprayed overnight at St James Church in Leyland, near Preston. Graffiti claiming "God is a lie" was also scrawled on the church's exterior.

1 month ago | bbc.com | Mat Trewern

Mat TrewernBBC News, LancashireThe daughter of a British soldier who helped liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp exactly 80 years ago said the "horrendous" scenes he witnessed there had changed his views about World War Two. Gunner Herbert Hurst, from Rossendale in Lancashire, was 36 when he entered the camp in Nazi Germany on 15 April 1945. "Before he went into Belsen, he didn't see the point of the war," explained Barbara Bell.