Review of the year 2007

Who had to apologise to the Queen? Which young Scots designer rocked London Fashion Week? Which political leader went to pot as a schoolboy? Why did the phones stop ringing at the BBC? How did Jamie Murray outshine his younger brother? Whatever happened to Harry Potter?

JANUARY

• After months of heated debate, Molly Campbell's mother drops her case for full custody of her daughter.

• Savage storms, with winds of 100mph, batter Britain, leaving 13 people killed.

• Reality star Jade Goody is evicted from Celebrity Big Brother following allegations of racism.

• Hillary Clinton announces she will run to become the first female US president.

FEBRUARY

• Tony Blair is questioned for a second time by police over the cash-for-honours allegations.

• Britain's first outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu is confirmed at a Suffolk farm.

• Anna Nicole Smith's death remains a mystery despite an autopsy and continued speculation.

• Scottish designer Christopher Kane sets the catwalk alight at London Fashion Week.

• Conservative leader David Cameron is left red-faced following reports that he smoked cannabis as a 15-year-old schoolboy at Eton.

• The pressure mounts as ministers are urged not to write a "blank cheque" for the Olympics, amid claims the final bill could reach £9bn.

MARCH

• Sir Menzies Campbell suggests a potential power-share with Labour as he sets out five 'tests' for a Gordon Brown-led government.

• Former White House aide Scooter Libby is convicted of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in a probe into the leak of a CIA spy's identity.

• The Tories attempt to cement their green credentials with a radical package of taxes on air travel designed to increase the cost of flying.

• Bosses of the BBC's Blue Peter are forced to apologise to viewers following a TV phone-in scandal.

• The Reverend Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams seal a historic deal at Stormont to restore power-sharing in Northern Ireland.

APRIL

• Some of the British Naval personnel who were kidnapped by Iran sell their stories to the press – generating outrage and a political enquiry

• Prince William splits with long-term love Kate Middleton.

• A gunman kills 32 at a Virginia university, in the worst shooting rampage in US history.

• GMTV terminates its contract with the company that ran its phone-in competition lines over allegations that viewers were being duped.

• Controversy mounts as to whether Prince Harry will be allowed to serve in Iraq.

• Britain basks in the warmest April for more than 140 years.

• An earthquake measuring 4.3 on the Richter scale leaves a trail of destruction in a quiet corner of Kent.

• Ian Rankin launches a serialisation for the New York Times and bids a farewell to Rebus.

MAY

• The SNP win 47 seats in the Scottish Parliament to Labour's 46, amid the controversy of spoiled ballot papers.

• Three-year-old Madeleine McCann goes missing in Portugal and is assumed to be abducted but still alive.

• George Bush welcomes the Queen to the White House during a state visit.

• Pop star George Michael pleads guilty to driving while unfit through drugs and admits to feeling "very ashamed".

• Tony Blair confirms he will step down as after ten years in office, and Gordon Brown officially launches his campaign to be the next Labour leader and PM.

• Alex Salmond makes history after being elected by MSPs as Scotland's first SNP First Minister.

• Channel 4 defies calls to pull a programme featuring graphic pictures of the car crash that killed Princess Diana in Paris in 1997.

JUNE

• Gordon Brown begins his reign as Labour leader.

• Two car bombs are found in London's West End. Both are defused.

• A car bomb attack on Glasgow Airport ends in blazing failure. Baggage handler John Smeaton becomes a national hero.

• Flooding sees vast areas of Yorkshire and the Midlands under water, leaving a number of people dead and hundreds homeless.

• Ian Botham and Salman Rushdie receive knighthoods.

• Kidnapped British journalist Alan Johnston is shown in a video saying he is "fit and well" and not being mistreated by his captors.

JULY

• Jamie Murray wins the mixed doubles at Wimbledon.

• Kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston is freed in Gaza after his 114-day ordeal.

• Madonna is among a horde of celebrities demanding action on climate change, as the Live Earth concerts draw to a close.

• Former spin doctor Alastair Campbell reveals Tony Blair wanted to quit Downing Street in 2002 and defends the decision to publish his diaries.

• JK Rowling publishes the finale of her Harry Potter series. Thousands queue overnight to get their hands on the final instalment.

• The BBC suspends phone-in competitions after it was revealed that certain shows, including Comic Relief and Children in Need, featured fake competition winners.

• The BBC apologises to the Queen for footage that wrongly implied she walked out of a shoot with photographer Annie Leibowitz.

• Nineteen-year-old singer-songwriter Amy Macdonald releases her first single after the limited-edition release of Poison Prince and goes on to great success in summer festivals around Scotland.

AUGUST

• Actor Chris Langham is found guilty of child pornography offences and remanded in custody for sentencing.

• An emergency operation to halt a new epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease is under way as a fresh outbreak in Surrey is confirmed.

• West Midlands Police make a complaint to Ofcom after a probe into the editing of Channel 4's Dispatches documentary Undercover Mosque.

• Portuguese police acknowledge for the first time that Madeleine McCann could be dead, 100 days after she disappeared.

• Rhys Jones, 11, is shot dead in a Liverpool pub car park by a hooded youth on a bike.

• Prince Harry pays tribute to "the best mother in the world" on the tenth anniversary of Princess Diana's death.

SEPTEMBER

• The McLaren team is stripped of all its points and banned for the rest of the season in the Formula One constructors' championship over the "spygate" row.

• Madeleine McCann's mother is named as a formal suspect in her daughter's disappearance; Madeleine's parents return to Britain without their daughter.

• Tributes flood in from around the world as opera superstar Luciano Pavarotti loses his battle with pancreatic cancer.

• Northern Rock's 1.5 million savers are told not to panic after it seeks emergency support from the Bank of England.

• Motorsport fans mourn the death of ex-world rally champion Colin McRae after a helicopter crash kills him, his five-year-old son and two friends.

• Gordon Brown delivers his personal manifesto in his first speech to Labour's annual conference as PM.

OCTOBER

• Postal workers walk out in the first of two 48-hour strikes, throwing mail deliveries into disarray.

• Gordon Brown rules out an autumn general election.

• The jury in the inquest into Princess Diana's death visit to the scene of her fatal crash in Paris.

• Former US vice president Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are jointly awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

• Sir Menzies Campbell resigns as leader of the Liberal Democrats.

• Three British parents drown after they try to rescue their children from the sea off the Algarve coast.

• David Tennant bags top actor and the top drama gong at the National Television Awards.

• Buckingham Palace refuses to comment on an alleged £50,000 'sex and drugs' blackmail plot targeting a member of the royal family.

• George Bush declares a "major disaster" in California as wildfires rage, forcing 500,000 to leave the area.

NOVEMBER

• The Metropolitan Police are found guilty of breaching health-and-safety laws over the shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005.

• British student Meredith Kercher is found murdered in Italy.

• Glasgow wins the race to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

• Amy Winehouse watches as husband Blake Fielder-Civil is remanded in custody charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

• Scottish hearts are broken by a 2–1 defeat to Italy in a crunch Euro 2008 qualifier. England later lose to Croatia, ending their hopes of qualifying.

• The body of West Lothian schoolgirl Vicky Hamilton is found at the former home of Peter Tobin in Margate, Kent, 16 years after she disappeared.

• Gordon Brown is forced to hand back more than £650,000 in donations to the Labour Party's coffers after admitting they had not been "lawfully declared".

• British primary school teacher Gillian Gibbons is arrested in Sudan, accused of insulting Islam's prophet by letting the children in her class name a teddy bear Muhammad.

DECEMBER

• President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party wins more than 60% of the vote in the country's parliamentary election.

• Missing-presumed-drowned canoeist John Darwin turns up five years after he vanished, claiming to have lost his memory. He is soon arrested as part of a fraud investigation.

• His wife Anne (pictured, centre, with her husband on the left) arrives back from Panama and is taken into police custody after being arrested on suspicion of fraud.

• After marathon talks, and an 11th-hour U-turn by the US, world leaders overcome bitter wrangling in Bali to reach a deal on a 'road map' to curb climate change.