Children locked away: Britain's modern bedlam

There are just 128 secure, Ofsted-regulated care homes in England for children suffering from severe emotional and behavioural difficulties. Social workers must scrabble daily for beds for the highly distressed, often suicidal children in their care. Usually, they can’t find one. We ask why there isn’t enough capacity in the system, and why these children are being harmed, not helped.

Rogue Lawyer: Power, money and a scandal at a London law firm

In 2014, a Jordanian man was imprisoned in a prison in Ras Al Khaimah, the northernmost Emirate in the UAE. He alleges he has been illegally detained and threatened. And the man he blames for this is a British lawyer. This is the story of the UK lawyer facing some of the most serious allegations ever levelled against a member of his profession.

Rupert Murdoch: News vs the truth

What happened inside Fox News in those critical weeks following Donald Trump’s election defeat in 2020?

Wronged: a murder and a miscarriage of justice

Following a brutal killing in north London in 2016, two innocent men, Patryk and Grzegorz, who had just arrived from Poland, were handed a life sentence for a murder they didn’t commit. This is the story of a remarkable miscarriage of justice, and a feeble effort by the law to correct itself.

Snatched: A mother's quest to find her children

Last September Ana’s ex-husband took her two sons on holiday for a week, and didn’t come home. He told her they were going to Spain – he even showed her the tickets and proof of the hotel. But they never went to Spain. Instead, he took the boys to California, switched off his phone, stopped using his bank cards, and went to ground. In doing so he triggered an international manhunt. ‘Snatched’ is about Ana’s quest to find him, and bring her children home.

Octopus: the allegations against Crispin Odey

One of Britain’s richest and most powerful men was cleared of sexual assault last year. Four more women have now come forward with similar allegations that Crispin Odey, a major donor to the Conservative party, sexually assaulted them. Other women allege that he sexually harassed them at the offices of his Mayfair hedge fund company.

Britannia unhinged

When Liz Truss arrived in Number 10 in early September she promised to usher in a new era. Exactly what that meant became clearer when her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, delivered a fiscal statement to the commons on 23 September. In the wake of the statement sterling slumped against the dollar, the cost of borrowing soared and some pension funds came close to going bust. What we’ve tried to piece together is what happened in those 17 days from the moment Kwasi Kwarteng arrived at the Treasury to the moment he got to his feet in the House of Commons.

Paradise Bust: Scandal in the British Virgin Islands

Earlier this year the premier of the British Virgin Islands, Andrew Fahie, was arrested by the US Drug Enforcement Agency in Miami. According to court papers Fahie, alongside BVI’s managing director of ports, had agreed to allow an undercover informant, posing as a member of a Mexican drug cartel, to use the islands to transport cocaine to the US.

Thank the Lord

Few appointments have been more controversial than Peter Cruddas for whom Boris Johnson did something unprecedented: he ignored and overruled the House of Lords Appointments Commission’s advice not to appoint Peter Cruddas, the first time any Prime Minister has ignored their advice. So what does Lord Cruddas’ story tell us about Boris Johnson’s plans for the House of Lords?

The Darwin job: the vanishing, reappearing notebooks

If Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, delivered a tale in which two tiny notebooks were left along with an anonymous note in the very library from which they had gone missing 22 years earlier, it might seem a bit far-fetched even for him. That those notebooks should contain the actual handwritten workings of Charles Darwin as he developed his theory of evolution just adds to the intrigue.

The Lost Ark

What happens when a museum possesses a group of objects so sacred that they can never be seen in public or studied in private – and the original owners want them back?

Greg Barker: the lord’s work

The days of the Russian oligarch in London are numbered. What fate awaits the enablers – those well-connected people who worked for and provided services to wealthy Russians? This is the story of one of them.

Unforgotten: Syria’s war crimes

How the chief of a notorious Damascus torture unit was put on trial thousands of miles away, in a German courtroom

A finding of rape

How a former government minister abused the secrecy of the family courts in an attempt to hide the truth.

The eureka moment | The Lab Detective Ep2

Kathleen Folbigg is just trying to survive. She’s a grieving mother, sentenced to life in jail for killing her four infant children. That is, until a small group of people start to question whether she might be the victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice. Our thanks to The Francis Crick Institute for sharing recordings and insights.

Introducing...The Lab Detective

Kathleen Folbigg has experienced unimaginable loss. All four of her infant children died suddenly, over a 10-year period. Their deaths were unexplained. Until a police detective turned up at her door, and arrested Kathleen on suspicion of murder. She was labelled ‘Australia's worst female serial killer’, convicted, and was destined to spend most of the rest of her life in jail. Until a different type of detective entered her life. A scientist working in a lab who uncovered the truth behind the deaths. This is the story of a shocking miscarriage of justice, but as journalist Rachel Sylvester starts to investigate how this happened, she learns that Kathleen is not alone – other mothers have endured the same fate, and may also be in prison. The Lab Detective is a story about the power of science, and the determination of those searching for the truth.

Three is murder | The Lab Detective Ep1

Journalist Rachel Sylvester investigates the case of 'Australia's worst serial killer'. And discovers, in a story about mothers who have been accused of murdering their own children, there is one man who connects them all: a doctor called Roy Meadow. Our thanks to The Francis Crick Institute for sharing recordings and insights.