Dearest Gentle Reader, this Author sat down to breakfast this morning and discovered that thirty thousand emails have been residing at the Palace for six years - and that is merely where today's extraordinary chronicle begins. There are triumphs of science, outrages of justice, and the singular indignity of being told to arrive at the airport three hours early and bring your own water. Raise your lorgnette and read on.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Author has rarely sat down to a dispatch so laden with grief and gravity as today's, and yet - tucked amongst the tragedies - a former prince's admirers remain conspicuously unwilling to assist British authorities, and the government has announced a grand expansion of apothecary powers for five ailments it has not yet thought to name. Friday, it seems, keeps its most extraordinary cards closest to its chest.