Dearest Gentle Reader, this very morning brings word of an audacious shadow industry, a checkout fee that has enraged eighty thousand learner drivers, and a defence secretary dispatching one hundred and twenty thousand drones before luncheon. Whether the Kingdom's affairs are conducted with more ingenuity in its law firms or its corridors of power, This Author leaves entirely to your judgement.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday has seen a prime minister lean towards old allies, a broadcaster reckon with a most inconvenient memory, and a beloved national institution bid farewell in a manner that may require your best handkerchief. This Author has also uncovered an extortion racket so brazen it makes the taxman look bashful - and it concerns the very portal through which you sold your last townhouse.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday brings a dismissal so abrupt the departed gentleman had already promised to return, a financial reckoning seventeen years in the making, and diplomatic unpleasantness between old adversaries that grows more tedious by the expulsion. This Author has studied the day's affairs most carefully - and finds, as ever, that the truth is more diverting than any fiction.