Chilcot Report Due To Be Published - Here's What The World Looked Like When it Was Announced

It's been seven years.

It's been seven years since Sir John Chilcot's inquiry into the Iraq War was announced - and how things have changed.

Chilcot once optimistically predicted his report would be published by late 2010 but it was not to be. It will, however, finally arrive on 6 July.

But can you actually remember what life was like then?

The likes of Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Cilla Black, Whitney Houston Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs and Amy Winehouse were all with us.

We had yet to hold the Olympics, had no idea horse meat would turn up in so much of our food, and were blissfully ignorant of our impending Brexit.

Some of the things and people we now know so well didn't even exist when the inquiry was announced in July 2009: Breaking Bad, Prince George, Princess Charlotte or Snapchat.

Try and cast your mind back to the dim and distant past that was 2009 - here are some of the other things you were missing out on...

The Shard
Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire
London's skyline was dramatically different before the Shard was completed in 2012.
Instagram
PeopleImages via Getty Images
How on earth did we make our pictures look lovely and nostalgic? The app was launched in 2010.
The portmanteau 'Brexit'
Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire
If only we had known...
The Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows films
Joel Ryan/AP
The last films in the series of film adaptations of JK Rowling's books weren't released until 2010 and 2011.
The plastic bag charge in the UK
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Wales was the first to begin charges for bags in 2011 and the other countries followed suit.
Tuition fees capped at £3,290 a year
CARL COURT via Getty Images
Protests in 2010 over tuition fee rises turned nasty and saw 30 Millbank vandalised. Tuition fees are currently capped at £9,000.
Gay marriage
LEON NEAL via Getty Images
Same-sex marriage was finally legalised in 2014.
Kim-Ye
Jason Merritt via Getty Images
The power couple only started dating in 2012.
Serial podcast
Boston Globe via Getty Images
No one can remember what they did on their commute before the gripping series was launched in 2014.
i Newspaper
Anthony Devlin/PA Wire
i was launched in 2010. It was bought by Johnston Press in 2016 when its sister paper The Independent ended its print copies.

The process of Maxwellisation, which means anyone criticised in the Chilcot Inquiry has the right to respond before it is published, has been cited as the main reason for the delays.

Tony Blair has strenuously denied he has held up publication by taking too long to respond to criticisms of him in the report.

A separate inquiry into the Maxwellisation process has been launched in a bid to explain the delays.

Publication was also held up by wrangling over the release of confidential messages between Blair and former US president George Bush.

The total expenditure since 2009 on the inquiry is £10,375,000 and anyone (apart from the family of soldiers killed in the war) hoping to get their hands on the report will have to fork out £787.

Close

What's Hot