Jamie Varley was given a whole life term for the murder of 13-month-old Preston Davey, who suffered “unremitting abuse” in an adoption abuse case

A cruel schoolteacher convicted of murdering his adopted infant during a sexual assault has made a court appearance.

Jamie Varley, 37, received a whole life sentence last month for killing 13-month-old Preston Davey, who endured “unremitting abuse” at the hands of the former secondary school head of year.

Varley attended Preston Crown Court via videolink from HMP Wakefield, frequently referred to as “Monster Mansion” and home to some of Britain’s most infamous killers.

Dressed in a striped jumper, Varley joined from a room within the prison, his elbows positioned on a desk before him with his hands clasped near his face, speaking solely to verify his identity.

He participated in a short, two-minute proceeding under the “slip rule” which permits judges to amend legal errors or correct inadvertent oversights.

Following his conviction for murder and 24 additional offences, when sentenced last month he had mistakenly not been sentenced for one count of sexual assault.

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Mr Justice Turner, also joining via videolink alongside other barristers from the trial, imposed a seven-year prison term on Varley for count 12, the sexual assault of the child, to be served concurrently with his existing sentences.

This will have no tangible impact as Varley was handed a whole life tariff and informed he would never leave prison by the same judge when sentencing occurred on 18 June.

Varley’s partner, former public schoolboy John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, also participated by videolink from HMP Preston at the proceedings. He received a 25-year prison sentence for permitting Varley’s abuse of the child and his own participation in the sexual abuse, following an eight-week joint trial.

Detectives stated that their offences had “shocked the nation”, branding Varley as “evil” and a “sadist”.

Preston had been treated as a “plaything”, subjected to routine sexual and physical abuse after the couple adopted him at nine months old, before he was murdered four months later at their Blackpool home in July 2023.

A social services inquiry is currently ongoing.

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By NICK PISA, SENIOR REPORTER

Published: 09:44 BST, 13 July 2026 | Updated: 12:34 BST, 13 July 2026

Memories of pandemics are often contentious. They can be disputed, uncomfortable and politically charged. As the COVID-19 pandemic begins to feel more distant, governments, communities and families have started asking how it should be remembered.

Efforts range from personal memorials for lost loved ones to official commemoration programmes. Looking at how earlier societies remembered pandemics can help inform how we commemorate COVID-19 today.

The outbreak of plague in 1346-53, known as the Black Death, was one of the worst pandemics in recorded history. Between a third and two thirds of the medieval European population are thought to have died.

Plague did not disappear, however, and society suffered from repeated outbreaks of the disease in the centuries that followed. As my research demonstrates, despite its pervasive presence, plague may have become something of a taboo subject among survivors, though individual attempts at commemoration have been preserved.

Taboo

One reason contemporaries avoided discussing plague was because it was believed the disease could be transmitted through imagination itself. People feared that thinking about plague might make it more likely to strike. In his chronicle written in the decade after the Black Death, the Carmelite friar Jean de Venette wrote that:

Such an enormous number of people died in 1348 and 1349 that nothing like it has been heard or seen or read about. And death and sickness came by imagination, or by contact with others and consequent contagion.

Others agreed that worrying about plague made people more likely to suffer from the disease. The medieval physician Bengt Knutsson advised people to “dread not death but live merrily and hope to live long”. To invoke plague, it seemed, was to invite it.

Trauma likely also played a significant role in the reluctance of some survivors to recall plague outbreaks. Those who lived through the Black Death witnessed horrors many may have preferred not to relive. So many people died that when cemeteries were full, huge trenches were reportedly excavated into which the deceased were placed in rows on top of each other. The Florentine chronicle of Marchionne di Coppo Stefani morbidly compared the layering of dirt and bodies in mass graves to “how one layers lasagna with cheese”. Some memories were better off buried.

The contested nature of plague memories can also be seen at the end of the fifteenth century, when an outbreak of disease divided a community in North Yorkshire. One group believed the victims had died of plague, while another described the illness instead as “pyned sekenes”, likely a pulmonary illness. The disagreement was significant because naming the disease shaped how it would be remembered. To call it plague was to connect it to the most feared epidemic disease in medieval life. To call it something else was to place it in a different, perhaps less charged, category.

Such was the aversion to recalling experiences of plague that historians have suggested that “as a collective memory it was in the process of being airbrushed from history”. One striking example comes from medieval English legal practice. To prove an heir was old enough to inherit land, witnesses were called upon to recall important events that had occurred during the heir’s lifetime, such as births, deaths or marriages. Yet out of 10,181 testimonies recorded between 1246 and 1430, only 13 explicitly mentioned plague. Memories of the disease may have been too painful to recount.

There is also a more mundane explanation for these silences. What survives in the historical record is often accidental. Few contemporaries left personal accounts of their experiences, and legal or financial records were usually formulaic documents, hardly suitable for lengthy recollections of personal tragedy. Our understanding of plague memories is therefore mediated by the sources that have survived.

Although individual experiences of plague are difficult to recover, the lasting impact of the disease on medieval culture is unmistakable. The rise of the Danse Macabre, which showed Death leading people from every rank of society in a final dance, reflected widespread anxieties about dying suddenly and unprepared.

Medieval people also found more personal ways to record their experiences. Graffiti carved into church walls provides glimpses of the horrors of plague and the desire for individual memorialisation. An inscription at St Mary’s church in Ashwell (Hertfordshire) describes the plague as “pitiable, fierce, violent”. Another at St Edmund’s church in Acle, Norfolk concludes:

therefore, while in this world the brute beast plague rages hour by hour, with prayer and with remembrance deplore death’s deadliness.

Other, undated inscriptions reveal more intimate losses. One at St Mary’s church in Gamlingay, Cambridgeshire simply records: “here lies Margaret in her tenth year”.

Plague may therefore have become a taboo subject for many survivors who wished to forget its horrors. Yet some of these silences are also the result of the kinds of sources historians rely upon. The voices that survive are shaped by chance, by record-keeping practices and by whose experiences were considered worth preserving.

This offers an important lesson today. The way future historians remember the COVID-19 pandemic will depend not only on what people experienced, but also on what was recorded, preserved and commemorated.

Myth 6: There won’t be anything left to leave your loved ones

The Truth: Lifetime mortgages have become increasingly flexible in recent years, and there are plans available which allow you to protect a portion of your equity for inheritance.

Alternatively, if you don’t want your loved ones to have to wait until you die before receiving financial support from you, you could use equity release to provide them with an early inheritance. According to the Equity Release Council, customers across the market unlocked an average lump sum of £121,196 in Q1 2026.

Equity release will reduce the value of your estate and may affect your entitlement to means-tested benefits. If you’re considering gifting to family, you may need specialist tax advice, which is not provided by Royal London Equity Release Advisers.

If you fall into the band where inheritance tax (IHT) is a consideration, equity release could help minimise your potential liability. This depends on individual circumstances and tax rules may change. Additionally, provided you live for another 7 years after making it, there may be no inheritance tax to pay on gifts to your loved ones.

Using a lifetime mortgage to give a cash gift may incur an inheritance tax liability. Your adviser can discuss this with you further. Taxation advice is not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority or the Prudential Regulation Authority.

Myth 7: It is an expensive way to borrow

The Truth: Releasing equity with a lifetime mortgage doesn’t have to be expensive.

There are a variety of features available that could help you to control the costs.

For example, you could release your equity in stages using a drawdown facility. Or you could control the impact of interest by choosing to make optional payments. Without payments, interest will build up over time, increasing the overall amount owed. Since interest rates are fixed for life, you will always know exactly how much it might cost you.

Your personal equity release adviser will also provide a personalised illustration, showing how much you could owe over time should you choose to release equity. You can use this to consider your plans and whether you want to make any payments over time.

Do you have more questions about equity release?

If you want to continue getting the truth about equity release, The Telegraph Media Group Equity Release Service may be able to help.

By filling out the calculator on this page, you will be put in touch with the trusted providers of this service, Royal London Equity Release Advisers.

Royal London Equity Release Advisers recommend plans from across the whole market, coming only from lenders that are members of the Equity Release Council. This means that you will benefit from their customer-focused standards. Their advisers will also help you to consider other financial products like retirement interest-only mortgages and traditional mortgage borrowing. Through comparing a range of options, you can find one that works for you.

To begin, select how you would like to receive your guide and fill out the requested details in the calculator below. If you are interested in speaking with the Information Team, leave a phone number and they will call you back.

Vicky emotionally spoke about not yet being a mother after being open about her journey to freeze her eggs

Vicky Pattison has been seen wiping away the tears as she spoke about not yet being a mother after being open about her journey to freeze her eggs.

The presenter and reality TV star revealed back in 2022 that she had decided to have her eggs frozen, saying at the time that her body ‘doesn’t have the luxury of loads of time’, while also knowing that it wasn’t the ‘right time’ for her to have children.

At the time, Vicky and her now-husband Ercan were early in their relationship, having met in 2019, but they have recently been seen discussing what the future looks like for them in their E4 documentary, Vicky Pattison: Maybe, Baby?, which followed the realities and pressures couples face to start a family.

Now, Vicky has emotionally opened up about her family plans, saying she feels “a bit lost” because she does not yet have a child. The former Geordie Shore star opened up on the Sort Your Life Out Unpacked podcast, telling host Dilly Carter: “It’s just the way the cookie crumbles and like how life sometimes presents you with different things and different opportunities and stuff.

“And I’ve never really felt ready until now!” The 38-year-old admitted: “It’s wild but like something just clicks, and the minute you feel ready it’s like you need a baby straight away.”

She explained: “And all my whole life I felt so content and so happy and so proud of the things I was doing, and now all of a sudden, because I don’t have a baby, I feel a bit lost,” before admitting: “I didn’t think I’d be this age without a baby or a family.”

As she wiped away tears, she praised her husband: “I love my husband so much. He’s going to make such a great dad. We’re just trying not to put too much pressure on ourselves.” In typical Vicky fashion, the Strictly Come Dancing 2025 contestant joked: “But yeah, at the moment, Well I mean, he’s [Ercan’s] having a lovely time.”

During her recent documentary, Vicky expressed her biggest concern was how having a baby could impact on her TV career, which she has finally got to a point she had dreamed of and also shared her worries that she wouldn’t be a good mother.

This is something she later echoed as she and Ercan spoke to Giovanna Fletcher on the latest episode of her podcast, Happy Mum Happy Baby. “I am absolutely terrified, and I’ll cry when I say this, I have a genuine fear that I won’t be good enough to be a mam,” she told the host, and former I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here winner.

But Ercan was quick to reassure her, speaking about Vicky’s caring side when it comes to their relationship, and hers with their beloved dogs, Max and Milo. He said: I’ve seen the way you are with the dogs, I’ve seen the way you are with me, she’s going to be unbelievable. She’s incredible.”

The County Armagh demonstration is generally regarded as the largest parade while Belfast has the longest Twelfth parade route of the day, with participants walking more than six miles to the field.

Parades will take place on Monday in Ballymena, Larne, Ballymoney, Portglenone, Glenarm, Newtownhamilton, Belfast, Rathfriland, Killyleagh, Royal Hillsborough, Ballymartin, Ballywalter, Maguiresbridge, Limavady, Kilrea, Cookstown, Castlederg and Aughnacloy.

By PERKIN AMALARAJ, FOREIGN NEWS REPORTER

Published: 08:18 BST, 13 July 2026 | Updated: 11:52 BST, 13 July 2026

In a list of characters that Emmerdale fans can’t wait to see again, Victoria Sugden (Isabel Hodgins) is right up at the top of the wish list. Fear not, Dales lovers. That wish is about to be granted!

Victoria left the Dales earlier this year in February, after a deadly confrontation in the woods with her twisted serial killer half-brother John Sugden (Oliver Farnworth) ended when she killed the monster in self defence with his own syringe, before trying to make it look like a suicide and fleeing the scene.

The truth behind John’s death was uncovered by the conniving lord of Home Farm Joe Tate, (Ned Porteous), who blackmailed Robert Sugden (Ryan Hawley) into framing Moira Dingle with an incriminating video of Victoria doing the bloody deed.

Wrestling with her own guilt over taking a life, Victoria decided to take Harry and flee the Dales, jetting off to Portugal to stay with her former stepmother Diane Sugden (Elizabeth Estensen)

Victoria’s exit came after actress Isabel Hodgins announced she would be taking maternity leave, departing the show after almost two decades in the village.

‘I will miss it.’ Isabel admitted’. I love the people there, but I’ve worked there for 19 years, so I feel like I’ve done what I’ve wanted to do and been selfish with my career. Now, it’s time to devote my life to being a mum, that feels right to me.’ 

Isabel gave birth to her first child, Georgia, with her husband Adam Whitehead back in February. Her departure left fans eagerly clamouring for the Emmerdale legend’s return.

That return appears to be right around the corner, according to Isabel. The actress posted two photos on Instagram which heavily tease her imminent comeback. The pictures show Isabel posing with the Emmerdale sign in the sunshine, with the flowers fully in bloom.

The soap star also included a video of her pushing her baby daughter Georgia round the village in her stroller, showing her all the sights including the church, the garage, the grave of her on-screen father Jack Sugden. Adam even got in on the fun, taking a ride on the roundabout in the village playground.

‘For the first time, I got to show Georgie (and Adam) around the village that’s been such a huge part of my life.’ Isbobel wrote.

‘I’ve been lucky enough to call this place work since I was 12 years old, so sharing it with my little family meant so much.

‘GG’s verdict? She’d quite happily move in.’

The gene behind orange-red hair seen in a section of people may also provide some health advantages by protecting the cells that produce the pigment, a new study suggests.

The protein building-block molecule cysteine is essential for the body to make proteins, but its levels must be kept low within cells, below the threshold of toxicity.

An excessive accumulation of cystine within cells has been recognised as the cause of a form of cell death.

Meanwhile, the orange-red pigment found in human red hair and in some bird feathers – called pheomelanin – is made using cysteine.

For a long time, the pigment has presented an evolutionary puzzle, with previous research linking it to a higher risk of skin cancer even without UV radiation exposure.

It has remained unclear why traits that encourage pheomelanin production, such as orange hair, have persisted over time.

Researchers have now found that producing this pigment may actually protect health by drawing down excess cysteine in cells, preventing the molecules from causing any damage.

“These findings represent the first experimental demonstration of a physiological role for pheomelanin,” they explain in the study published in the journal PNAS Nexus.

The latest research was possible thanks to a recent discovery of a molecule, ML349, that could block pheomelanin synthesis in the body.

In the study, scientists assessed 65 adult zebra finches, whose orange beaks contain pheomelanin.

The 65 birds were divided into a treatment group and a control group.

In the treatment group, male zebra finches were given dietary cysteine along with ML349, a drug that blocks pheomelanin synthesis.

Male birds that received both cysteine and ML349 showed more serious cell damage than males that received cysteine alone.

Scientists found that pheomelanin production seemed to help cells keep cysteine levels in balance.

Female birds given cysteine alone also tended to show more cell-level damage than controls.

The findings suggest pheomelanin production in the body helps maintain cysteine balance by converting excess cysteine into an inert pigment that doesn’t damage cells.

“These results demonstrate that pheomelanin synthesis avoids cellular damage by excreting excess cysteine to inert keratinous structures such as feathers,” scientists wrote.

This protective role, according to researchers, could be why pheomelanin-promoting genetic traits remain in populations, even though there are associated melanoma risks.

“These findings prove a role of pheomelanin in cysteine homeostasis, opening a better understanding of melanoma risk through environmental factors affecting cysteine availability,” scientists wrote.