You may have recently noticed some changes to your search results when using the BBC News website. My colleague Matthew McDonnell has written a post describing the BBC's Search+ platform.

Read more and comment at the BBC Internet Blog.

Steve Herrmann is editor of the BBC News website.

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After a year of filming and collecting material, today sees the launch on the BBC News website of a multimedia special report about UK troops in Afghanistan, Life with the Lancers.

BBC News followed four Army soldiers from the Queen's Royal Lancers regiment, ranging in rank from trooper to major, through pre-deployment training and a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

They were given cameras to gather video-diary material, took stills as well, and talked to BBC correspondents at different stages during the year about their experiences. The Army's combat camera team also provided material.

The idea originally came from BBC Newsgathering producer Annette Bartholomew during what she describes as "a routine job" covering the Queen giving out medals to troops in Catterick: "I asked Fondouk Squadron if they would let us follow them during training. They said yes after getting support from Brigadier Richard Felton."

Our aim was to understand what the daily experience of UK troops serving in Afghanistan is actually like, in more detail than headline news reports allow. The result is a detailed picture of the day-to-day realities of deployment, from training and life in camp to going out on patrol and home leave.

For the soldiers, it has been a chance to tell us what a tour of duty entails for them and their families: the painstaking preparations, the basic necessities of camp life, the dangers of operations and the impact of losing comrades.

For us, it has required collaboration between our video-on-demand team, online graphic designers and journalists, regional specialists, newsgathering reporters and producers and the BBC News Channel, which tonight will start showing the half-hour documentary At War: The Soldiers and their Families.

We are currently working on a follow-up project which aims to look in detail at the experiences of a group of recruits to the Afghan army, the force on which the strategic success of Nato-led forces in Afghanistan may ultimately depend.

Steve Herrmann is editor of the BBC News website. Life with the Lancers can be seen online here; At War: The Soldiers and their Families is on the BBC News Channel on Monday 20 December at 2030 and 2330 GMT.

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Brian Hanrahan's career was made by one, short, well-turned phrase - but there was so much more to the man who, for three decades, roamed the world reporting on the biggest stories of the day.

 

In 1982, as the Royal Navy Task Force sailed in the south Atlantic, Brian was stationed aboard HMS Hermes, the aircraft carrier that served as the flagship of the fleet. Then - as today - reporters covering wars are not allowed to disclose "operational details".

So the phrase for which he will always be remembered was a clever ruse to get round reporting restrictions so he could say all the British Harrier jets had returned safely. It was a classroom lesson in good reporting under pressure - and won him new-found fame.

In the early 1990s, the satirist Chris Morris wrote a spoof TV news show, first for Radio 4 as On The Hour, and then for BBC2 as The Day Today. It was most famous for its sports reporter, Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge. But the name of the economics correspondent, Peter O'Hanraha-Hanrahan was clearly an "homage" to Brian. What greater accolade could any journalist wish for?

The steady nerve Brian showed in the Falkands served him well in the intervening 28 years - he saw more than his share of history unfold. Covering Asia from Hong Kong in the 1980s, he reported on the reforms of Deng Xiaoping in China, and the assassination of Indira Gandhi in India. He moved to Moscow when Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader, returning to Russia last year to interview Gorbachev. In 1989 he was in Beijing when the tanks rolled in to Tiananmen Square, famously reporting on the fall of the Wall as Berlin was reunited. Earlier this year he returned to Poland - where he'd reported on the rise of Solidarity - to cover the plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski.

In recent years, Brian had travelled to many countries, and covered ceremonial and state events such as the anniversaries of D-Day and the funerals of Princess Diana, the Queen Mother and the Pope. He was a regular voice on Radio 4 as presenter of both The World at One and The World This Weekend.

Brian fell ill the week before the election, and on polling day I went to visit him in hospital in north London. He was preparing for a long night and was frustrated that he wouldn't be at an election count, as he had been for the previous seven. Instead, he had persuaded the nursing staff to allow him to have a radio and an earpiece, and was making a date with Radio 4.

He returned to work while undergoing treatment - while tired, he was determined to do the job he loved. Last week, he'd planned to report from RAF Cottesmore as the Harriers he'd counted out in the Falklands were counted back for the final time before being withdrawn from service. Instead, he found himself back in hospital. As Harriers landed for the final time, the crews of RAF Cottesmore recorded a get-well message to Brian.

Brian had a special relationship with the audience - he broke through in a way few others do. They had come to trust him as a voice of calm - whether reporting on momentous events of history, or the grand state events. For more than 30 years, it was that quality above all others that distinguished Brian as one of the BBC's brightest and best. We mourn his loss.

Jon Williams is the BBC World News editor.

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