Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday has arrived bearing gifts of the most alarming variety - a constable shot in the foot, a nation's children declared in a state of emergency, and a bomb threat to one hundred and sixty schools that turned out, thankfully, to be entirely fictional. Whether the same can be said for the property market's delusions is a question this Author addresses with considerable relish within.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday brings a column that ranges from the schoolroom to the gaol cell, from the gravest of anniversaries to the most theatrical of political reshuffles. Nearly half of the Kingdom's teachers plan to quit, a rabbi speaks of a community more frightened now than on the day of the attack, and Lady Badenoch rearranges her china whilst the house debates whose dangerous prisoners these really are - yours to discover within.