From the Mermaid to the Palace of Westminster, Johnny Timpson takes a look back at 2018 in his recent article.

Whilst sounding like a pantomime fairy tale theme, this title is an apt description of 2018 – a year of reflection and change. We’ve reflected on the centenaries of women’s suffrage and the end of WW1, the 70th anniversary of both our NHS and the National Assistance Act 1948. For those who don’t know, the latter abolished Elizabethan Poor Laws dating from 1601, bringing about a move from institutional to community based and means-tested social care. We also remembered the 50th anniversary of the world’s first human to human heart transplant and first UK heart transplant. To support this anniversary, Scottish Widows sponsored the creation of both a TV documentary, ‘The Operation That Stopped The World’ and a short film on how this procedure led to the creation of Critical Illness Insurance.