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Dearest Gentle Reader,
It is Friday, and this Author finds herself reflecting that the English gift for catastrophe is, if anything, accelerating. One barely sets down one’s quill before another outrage demands it be raised again. Today’s dispatches concern ransacked shelves, rebranded breakfast preserves, threatened legislators, Easter rail misery, a most sinister undertaker, and – as a restorative tonic – a genuinely uplifting act of love outlasting death. Brace yourselves.
First, to the great retail battlefields of the Capital. The directors of Marks & Spencers’ Grand Emporium have issued a cry of alarm that would not shame a general on a besieged frontier. Shoplifting gangs have, it seems, graduated from opportunistic pilfering to full theatrical production: locked cabinets forced open, shelves stripped of steak in broad daylight, and – most shockingly – a colleague left hospitalised after having ammonia thrown in their face. Lady Mahmood, the Home Secretary, has received a letter from the chief executive urging action, whilst the retail director has appealed to the London Mayor to furnish the police with greater resources. This Author notes that if organised criminals have begun treating Marks & Spencers’ Grand Emporium as a free pantry, society’s relationship with the concept of property has taken a decidedly radical turn.
And now, Gentle Reader, to a controversy so quintessentially British that this Author wept a single silent tear into her morning toast. Marmalade – that sacred, bitter, Seville-orange preserve beloved of bears and breakfast tables alike – must henceforth be labelled “citrus marmalade” under the government’s proposed alignment with Continental Alliance food regulations. The Continental Alliance, it transpires, has widened its definition of marmalade to include non-citrus spreads, because the Germans and Spaniards have long applied the word to plum and fig confections without a moment’s shame. Britain, having spent the 1970s lobbying fiercely to protect the word for citrus alone, must now append a clarifying adjective to distinguish our noble preserve from a jar of foreign fig paste. Paddington Bear could not be reached for comment, but one suspects he would be inconsolable.
Meanwhile, the nation’s elected representatives are apparently now obliged to receive death threats as a routine professional hazard. Reports of crimes against members of the Grand Assembly have more than doubled since 2019, reaching nearly one thousand last year – fifty of which were death threats, up from thirty-one the year prior. The Metropolitan Constabulary‘s Parliamentary Liaison Team recorded over four thousand offences against MPs between 2019 and 2025, dominated by malicious communications and harassment. A new national democracy protection unit has now been established, led by police chief Commander Balmer, to co-ordinate intelligence and assist forces in investigating such offences. That we have arrived at a moment requiring a dedicated unit to prevent the murder of legislators is, this Author submits, a datum worth sitting with in uncomfortable silence.
For those planning Easter travel, this Author extends her deepest sympathies with the efficiency of a funeral director – a comparison that shall shortly acquire unfortunate resonance. Euston Grand Terminus will operate almost no services between Good Friday and the eighth of April, as the National Rail Works Commission replaces a major bridge and upgrades signalling. Avanti services terminate at Milton Keynes, from whence replacement coaches ferry passengers to Bedford, where they may board a train to St Pancras Grand Terminus. The Hammersmith and City Underground Passage, the Bakerloo Underground Passage, and the Docklands Light Railway are variously suspended or disrupted for good measure. One can only admire the ambition of scheduling an entire national inconvenience across the one weekend when the public is most determined to travel.
And finally, Gentle Reader, this Author turns from the grim to the genuinely moving. The Bowelbabe Fund, established by the late Dame Deborah James in the final weeks of her life in May 2022, has now raised twenty million pounds for cancer research – a figure that began as a target of a mere quarter-million. The Prince of Wales wrote on the Portrait Gallery to praise her “amazing legacy”, and her father told the Broadcasting Society’s Morning Programme that even Dame Deborah, with all her extraordinary energy, would scarcely believe what has been achieved in her name. The funds have supported sixteen research projects, including a bowel cancer vaccine. In a week of stolen steaks, renamed marmalade, and threatened politicians, Dame Deborah James – who turned her dying days into a gift to the living – reminds us what human beings are also capable of. This Author does not often find herself moved to set down her pen and simply feel. Today is one of those days.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.