Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday brings a banking house that profits mightily whilst bidding farewell to five thousand of its faithful servants, a Dame of the stage who now navigates the world by the warmth of strangers she cannot quite see, and a mother's fight for a justice that a murderer refused to witness in person. This Author has rarely encountered a morning's dispatches so varied in their texture - from the Arctic to the Old Bailey, from the laboratory to the drawing room. Pray, do read on.

Dearest Gentle Reader, Monday has delivered a blast furnace of news - nationalisation, a most alarming cruise ship, a record-breaking television triumph, and the death of a man who once commanded the Death Star. This Author has opinions on all of it, and restraint has never been among her virtues.