'My heart is already dead' Hope meets despair in Calais camps

A year after 27 people died trying to cross the Channel, people are still drawn by the dream of a better life in Britain

- Dan Sabbagh

Wet and bedraggled on a rainswept November day, Badr is one of dozens of men who have arrived to pick up a tent and a sleeping bag from a charity operating out of a van in a car park in Calais. The 22-year-old from Syria has been in Calais more than a week, and his previous tent was taken by police four days ago. After that he slept under a footbridge, huddled with six others for warmth.

It is a year since at least 27 people were drowned when their boat capsized in the Channel, the worst disaster for 30 years. But while such a tragedy has mercifully not been repeated, partly thanks to better coordination between French and British coastguards, at first sight there is little other change in the wretched conditions faced by refugees in northern France.

Originally from Aleppo in northern Syria, Badr, then 13, and his family fled in the early stages of the country's civil war in 2013 - "I didn't want to fight because I didn't want to kill anybody" - before ending up in Iraq, with his family scattered there and in Lebanon and Turkey, struggling for money and hope. But this year, he wants to join a brother in the UK and insists, after spending four days on a boat to cross the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy, he has nothing left to fear.