Dearest Gentle Reader, Thursday has delivered, in the space of a single afternoon, a footballing collapse of historic proportions, a political farewell conducted with surprising dignity, and a digital platform that apparently cannot tell a child from an adult. This Author has opinions on all three - and they are not, she warns you, entirely restrained.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday brings a government curfew that teenagers may instantly dismantle, a British couple in a Persian gaol whose ordeal grows more shocking by the hour, and a Kingdom so thoroughly baked by the sun that even the scandals feel warm to the touch. This Author has opinions on all of it - some arch, some grave, and at least one barely fit for polite society.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday brings dispatches of the gravest and most varied sort - a murder investigation that has stretched from Dartmoor to South Yorkshire, a Chancellor dispensing parting wisdom with a smile that does not quite reach her eyes, and a Kingdom that is, quite literally, on fire. This Author has much to set before you, and not all of it will be easy reading - though she promises to make it as bearable as the heat permits.