Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday delivers a courtroom reckoning long overdue, a prime-minister-in-waiting who has discovered the precise dimensions of 'some room', and a doner kebab revelation that will alter your late-night dining habits permanently. This Author has investigated, raised an eyebrow, and - in one instance at least - set aside her wit entirely in favour of something rather more serious.

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 Monday brings dispatches of such varying weight that this Author's lorgnette has barely had a moment's rest - from a judicial decision that has left the entire Kingdom aghast, to a Cabinet minister's aircraft subjected to the most ungentlemanly interference from an easterly neighbour. And if that were not sufficient drama, a single passenger's carelessly packed luggage has managed to reroute an entire aeroplane to Rome. Today's column contains multitudes.