LOOKING back to the week of January 23 to January 29, 2018, when MPs united to call for better funding for treatment for childhood cancer; and a Second World War veteran receives France's highest honour.

MPs across the political divide called on ministers to rethink the treatment for childhood cancer in January 2018, saying raising funds for specialist medical care puts huge pressures on families.

The campaign was backed by the parents of six-year-old Bradley Lowery of Blackhall, east Durham, who touched the hearts of millions in his fight against neuroblastoma.

Read more: Decaying pub that's been closed since 2015 could be bought by council

Gemma and Carl Lowery raised more than £700,000 to pay for him to be given pioneering antibody treatment in New York – only to be told his cancer had grown and was terminal.

Mrs Lowery said: “We are fighting to have antibody treatment available on the NHS. Statistics show there is 80 per cent chance of relapse after initial treatment if the patient does not have the antibody treatment.

“It can improve to 50 to 60 per cent if you do have the antibodies. A 20 per cent difference may not sound like a lot, but when you are the parent of a child with neuroblastoma that is a big percentage to us.”

A Second World War hero who fought during during the Dunkirk evacuation and DDay landings was honoured with a rare award on January 25, 2018.

Mel Wallace, 97, who lived in Riverside View care home in Darlington, was presented with the National Order of the Legion of Honour, the highest military order in France.

Mr Wallace served in the Northumbrian Division Signals Regiment.

Mr Wallace, who accepted the award “on behalf of all the men who didn’t come home”, left school aged 14 to become an apprentice joiner, and worked as a cabinet-maker in Binns in Darlington in 1938.

“I was putting furniture together and listened on the radio to what was happening in our country – it all seemed so wrong.

“I had wanted to go to sea from being a lad and this sort of pushed me into it.”

He left for duty in October 1939 and served throughout the war, spending time in France, Germany, Italy, South Africa, Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Tunisia to name a few.

He escaped from Bray Dunes in the Dunkirk evacuation in early June in 1941, and spent Christmas of that year in Iraq protecting oil fields from an Axis attack.

He was also part of the landings on Gold Beach during the D-Day operations.

A Grade II listed stone marking the site of a gruesome historic murder which shocked the Yorkshire Dales was destroyed in a crash on January 20, 2018.

Read next:

If you want to read more great stories, why not subscribe to your Northern Echo for as little as £1.25 a week. Click here

Farmer Peter Fall appealed for information to try and find out what happened after he found the Murder Stone in pieces.

The stone lies at the side of the main A684 road near Akebar, between Bedale and Leyburn, and bears the inscription 19 May 1826, Do No Murder. It was put up on the site where local farmer, 56-year-old Nicholas Carter was mugged and murdered.

He had been travelling home from Leyburn Market with a pocket full of money when farm labourer Leonard Wilkinson, 22, struck him with a wooden rail, knocking him from his horse and beating him around the head.

Wilkinson was tracked down by justice of the peace and local landowner Marmaduke Wyvill but denied the charge when he appeared at York Assizes.

Mr Fall feared the stone may be beyond repair. “It’s been such a big part of my life, we’ve always been interested in the history of the stone."