Dearest Gentle Reader,
This Author had scarcely set her teacup upon its saucer this morning before no fewer than three dispatches of the most lurid variety arrived at her writing desk, each more astonishing than the last. One does so enjoy a quiet Sunday, yet the affairs of the realm conspire against tranquillity with admirable persistence. As we find ourselves well into the month of March, one might hope the season of Lent would encourage some measure of restraint among the powerful. Alas, one would hope in vain.
The indefatigable Lord Trump, never content to let a morning pass without issuing proclamations from his personal gazette, has demanded that the Kingdom and sundry nations dispatch their finest warships to the Strait of Hormuz with all haste. The great waterway, through which a fifth of the world’s oil customarily flows, has become rather inhospitable since the American Colonies and their allies commenced hostilities with Persia a fortnight past. Lord Trump assures us that one hundred per cent of Persia’s military capability has been obliterated, yet in the same breath warns of stray drones and the odd mine – rather like a gentleman boasting he has slain the dragon whilst cautioning that it might still breathe fire. The War Office has responded with the uniquely British promise that it is “discussing a range of options,” which This Author understands to mean someone is writing a memorandum about writing a memorandum.
Speaking of weaponry, the Liberal Democrat Society has undergone a most extraordinary transformation. Sir Davey, their leader, has risen at the party’s spring conference in York to declare that the Kingdom must build its very own nuclear missiles, freeing itself from dependence upon the American Colonies and their increasingly capricious stewardship of the Trident programme. A party once known for sandals and earnest recycling pamphlets now calls for the forge fires of atomic self-sufficiency. “Britain has the best scientists, the best engineers, the best builders in the world,” Sir Davey proclaims, apparently forgetting that several of those builders are currently occupied trying to finish a railway to Birmingham. Still, one must admire the ambition.
Closer to home, the government has declared war upon a foe less geopolitical but no less vexing: the fly-tipper. Crown Environmental Officers may soon enjoy police-style powers to search premises without warrant, seize assets, and arrest those who treat the Southern Kingdom’s hedgerows as their personal rubbish heap. Lady Reynolds, the Secretary for the Natural Estate, promises “decisive action,” and drivers caught in the act may even receive penalty points upon their licences. This Author notes with wry satisfaction that the previous government proposed something remarkably similar in 2024, proving that in matters of discarded mattresses, the two great parties are at last united.
This Author must now report, with neither relish nor surprise, that Mr Alford, the disgraced actor formerly of the theatrical productions Grange Hill and London’s Burning, has been found dead in his prison cell at Bure Gaol in Norfolk, a mere two months after receiving an eight-and-a-half-year sentence for the sexual assault of two teenage girls. He was fifty-four. The Prisons Ombudsman shall investigate, as is customary. This Author offers no eulogy, only the observation that justice, once delivered, sometimes writes its own final chapter.
And what of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex? The ever-embattled pair have taken spirited umbrage at Mr Bower, the biographer, whose forthcoming tome alleges that Queen Camilla told a confidante that the Duchess had “brainwashed” the Duke. The Sussex household has dismissed the work as “deranged conspiracy and melodrama” – a phrase This Author intends to embroider upon a cushion. Mr Bower, for his part, appears to regard provocation as a professional obligation. One might observe that the royal soap opera requires no scriptwriter; reality furnishes drama enough for several seasons.
In the corridors of power, a tragedy of the most harrowing kind: an eighteen-day-old infant has perished, and the Metropolitan Constabulary has arrested a woman of three-and-forty on suspicion of murder. The matter is believed domestic in nature. This Author, for all her appetite for scandal, knows when silence and solemnity are the only proper response. May the truth be swiftly found, and may the family know some measure of peace.
Meanwhile, in Coventry, the constabulary is confronted with a mystery that might have been penned by a gothic novelist of questionable taste. A gentleman aged between forty and fifty has been discovered deceased inside a council wheelie bin in Cash’s Park, having apparently been struck by a motor vehicle and deposited there by person or persons unknown. The police have issued an urgent appeal for anyone who may have, and one does quote, “noticed a change in behaviour from someone they know who drives.” This Author imagines half of Coventry’s population glancing nervously at their spouses over breakfast.
This Author shall close today on a note of human warmth, for even the most jaded chronicler requires occasional restoration of faith. In Crane Park, Twickenham, a coffee vendor by the name of Mr Yari – who fled Persia nine years ago after making television content critical of the regime – was assaulted and robbed of his takings upon his very birthday. His devoted customers, horrified by the outrage, crowdfunded three thousand pounds to restore him. One patron credits Mr Yari with saving his life; another calls him “God’s angel.” A man who left behind family and freedom, and found both again beside a coffee caravan and a curly-haired dog named Walter. Even This Author’s famously stony heart is not entirely immune.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.