Bridge over the River Kwai veteran Walter Stead told us his story about the horrors of life on the death railway after 70 years of silence and in another Second World War tale, Jon Entwistle finally met the sister he didn’t know he had.

Winter’s first gales wreaked havoc on the roads, while the North Yorkshire coast witnessed the worst storm surge in 60 years.

We revealed how cuts to village bus services could hit some of North Yorkshire’s most vulnerable people.

But better news came as benefit claimant figures showed that York coped well with the economic downturn in 2013 and the city’s pupils scored above the national average in the latest Key Stage 2 performance results.

Howsham Mill is back to its former gothic glory, 60 years after being abandoned and we had a first glimpse of ideas for more modern architecture at the new 270 home development at Terry’s former site.

A York church – St Thomas with St Maurice in Lowther Street, The Groves – received a £100,000 Christmas windfall, after a court ruled it could keep a bin-bag full of cash left on the doorstep of a property it owned in Haxby Road.

The church pledged to use the money in the local community.

Finally, it wouldn’t be Christmas in York without a Berwick Kaler pantomime. This year he starred in Aladdin and The Twankeys at the Theatre Royal.
 

In national and international news...

...There was uproar when news broke that MPs are to receive an 11 per cent pay rise. The rise was set by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.

Neil Robertson won the UK Snooker Championship at the Barbican, York. And Wimbledon champion Andy Murray became the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. On the other side of the world, pundits had forecast an Ashes whitewash for England, but the Aussies destroyed the tourists in clinical fashion, winning the first three tests to take an unassailable 3-0 in the series before Christmas.

Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale were found guilty of murdering Drummer Lee Rigby as he walked to Woolwich Barracks; Lost Prophets singer Ian Watkins was handed a 35-year jail sentence for a string of child sex offences which ‘plumbed new depths of depravity’; actor Peter O’Toole and veteran sports presenter David Coleman both died; and the world also mourned the death of Nelson Mandela.

Sisters Francesca Grillo, 35, and sister Elisabetta, 41, were cleared of fraud in a trial that became more about their employers – celebrity chef Nigella Lawson and her exhusband Charles Saatchi.

The year ended with storms which wreaked havoc across the UL – although our region missed the worst of them.


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