Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday has delivered warmth in places that least expected it - meteorological, emotional, and diplomatic - whilst serving a chill to those who perhaps deserved one. A duchess has returned, a chancellor has promised breathing space without specifying where one might sit, and fifteen creatures the size of pencil tips have, in this Author's considered view, outshone almost everyone else in the news. Do read on.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday brings royal parallels that chill the blood, a nation's drug supply that grows more lethal by the week, and a political inheritance in North Britain that would test the most resolute of souls. There is also, if you will believe it, a crisis involving tens of thousands of stranded fridge-freezers - a sentence This Author did not expect to write, and yet here we all are.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings confessions from the highest reaches of the Secret Intelligence Service, heartbreak from the corridors of the National Health Society, and a palace dispute so combustible it could warm an entire London season. This Author has rarely set down her pen with a heavier hand - nor, she confesses, a more astonished expression.