Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday brings dispatches of such weight and variety that This Author scarcely knew whether to reach for her smelling salts or her atlas - for the Southern Kingdom appears to be burning, flooding, and derailing itself simultaneously. A man of great promise is mourned, a nation holds its breath against the spark, and one of the Kingdom's grandest air terminals appears to have developed an alarming relationship with its own plumbing. Read on, if you dare.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings dispatches of the gravest and most impudent variety - a convicted murderer who would appear to have found one final move upon the board, a Prime Minister who has relocated the entire machinery of government to Manchester, and a Principality quite literally visible from space. This Author's lorgnette has rarely been so thoroughly exercised.

Dearest Gentle Reader, the Celestial Empire has registered its displeasure, a mayor has traded his civic empire for a rather larger one, and somewhere in the Kingdom a young woman has finally received justice for a most extraordinary campaign of impersonation. This Author has much to report, and Friday - baking, as it is, beneath a heat dome of truly theatrical proportions - has not disappointed.