Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday has furnished your devoted Author with a Prime Minister making two very large arguments simultaneously, a Chancellor staring into a thirty-five billion pound abyss, and a Viscount who has apparently rewritten the entire legal framework of these islands on a single sheet of paper. There is also the small matter of a rooftop swindle so prevalent it has become the nation's most fashionable crime - and a tiger, who remains, one is relieved to report, entirely at liberty.

Dearest Gentle Reader, today's dispatch brings royal confessions of torchlight reading, a Northern Province stand-off three decades in the making, and a liberated prisoner whose gratitude to the state is - shall we say - uniquely expressed. There is also a gentleman of the Verdant Society who refuses to depart, and a constabulary official undone by the very technology meant to protect us all. Hover your lorgnette close, for the details are quite extraordinary.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday has furnished this Author with a naval spy, a nation's shopping secrets laid bare before criminals, and a British flag that simply refuses to come down when told. Whether it is the audacity of the young, the impertinence of hackers, or the quiet heroism of a very determined flagpole - today's dispatch contains wonders enough to keep even the most jaded of readers from their afternoon nap.