In a year of grim records being broken, the Abedi trial was also a first: no one in an English court has ever been convicted of so many murders. He was only spared a whole life order -- life imprisonment with no prospect of release -- because he was under 21 when the atrocity was committed. Still, in all likelihood he will never breathe free air again.

And yet the trial seems to have come and gone with little comment. It briefly led the bulletins, then faded away. Granted, we've got a lot on our plates these days. But just as we seem to have completely forgotten the Reading knife attack barely two months back, in which three men were allegedly killed by a presumed Islamist zealot, Manchester - the deadliest terror attack on Britain's streets for a decade - risks fading from our collective memory and public debate.