Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday the Grand Assembly returns from recess bearing documents of extraordinary volume, a court has declared common sense the winner of a £100 million dispute, and a personal trainer has been awarded a small fortune for the crime of an empty chair. There is, besides all this, a whiteboard in Nottingham that this Author cannot shake from her thoughts - and which every person of conscience ought to know about.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Author has rarely sat down to a dispatch so laden with grief and gravity as today's, and yet - tucked amongst the tragedies - a former prince's admirers remain conspicuously unwilling to assist British authorities, and the government has announced a grand expansion of apothecary powers for five ailments it has not yet thought to name. Friday, it seems, keeps its most extraordinary cards closest to its chest.

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.