Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday brings with it a most troubling trio - women failed by those sworn to heal them, a village poisoned by the very pans it once cooked in, and a gentleman with a knife making rather free with a boat in the Channel. There is also a government proposal so breathtakingly self-unaware that this Author had to read it twice to be certain it was not satire. You will wish to read every word.

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.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday delivers a quartet of dispatches grave enough to give one pause and one glittering discovery to restore the faith. Four thousand souls face uncertain futures at a most celebrated carriage house, a beloved news presenter reveals a battle fought in dignified silence - and a Victorian lady who talked her way into a museum with no qualifications whatsoever has finally received the recognition she deserved some one hundred years ago. This Author has opinions on all of it, naturally.