Portrait of the week | 17 March 2012

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David Cameron, the Prime Minister, on an official visit to the United States, joined President Barack Obama in declaring that their relationship was not just special but ‘a unique and essential asset’. The Queen began her Diamond Jubilee tour of the United Kingdom at Leicester, with the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duchess of Cambridge. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, put his mind to new government bonds of 100 years or more. In the face of government proposals to introduce marriage between people of the same sex, the Archbishops of Westminster and Southwark wrote a joint letter read out in pulpits about the Catholic ‘duty to do all we can to ensure that the true meaning of marriage is not lost’.Water companies imposed hosepipe bans in the south-east from 5 April. Magnetic storms swept the Earth after the Sun spewed out two great flares.

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Darrell Desuze, aged 17, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of a man trying to put out a fire in Ealing during last August’s riots. A judge jailed Beau Isagba, aged 18, for seven years for breaking the jaw of a Malaysian student during the riots. Eric Joyce, the Labour MP for Falkirk, was fined £3,000 and banned from pubs for three months after he admitted assaulting three MPs in the politicians in Strangers’ Bar at the House of Commons; he resigned from the Labour party. Lord Hanningfield, now out of jail and having repaid £30,254 of wrongly claimed expenses, is to return to the Lords next month. Venus was seen to come very close to Jupiter.

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Police investigating the illegal interception of voicemails arrested Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of the Sun, her husband Charlie, the racehorse trainer, and four others. Liberal Democrats at their spring conference voted against reforms to the National Health Service advocated by Nick Clegg, the party leader and deputy Prime Minister.