Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday brings a prime minister issuing warnings he can barely enforce, a Russian warship with a flair for the dramatic, and a television personality whose news silences even this Author's sharpest quill. The digital salons, the nation's grocery bill, and a retired couple with nerves of steel all demand your attention - and this Author, for once, is quite out of breath keeping up.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Author writes to you from beneath a sun so unseasonably ferocious that the very social calendar has begun to wilt. His Majesty the King has been spotted laughing at a replica crown - and that is merely the most dignified item in today's dispatch. A politician campaigning against unsafe streets whilst harbouring a rather personal relationship with a criminal conviction is a detail that deserves your fullest attention.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings dispatches of such gravity, such audacity, and such bureaucratic absurdity that This Author's pen has scarcely kept pace with the hour. A tale of invisible survivors, a broadening investigation into a most prominent Norfolk gentleman, and the particular torment awaiting those who thought escaping to the Continent might offer relief - all await within.