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.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday brings economic prophecies dark enough to make one's teacup tremble, shadow ships lurking in the Channel, and a corporate resignation that speaks volumes - mostly in the language of shoes. This Author has studied the day's dispatches with great care, and she invites you to draw rather closer, for the news is not fit to shout across a ballroom.