Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday brings a most curious assortment of dispatches - from a Kingdom too hot to breathe and too dry to bear, to a gentleman of ninety-nine years who asked only for a cow and a rosette. Between these two extremes lie a predawn incident outside a York mosque and the anguished plea of a wife whose husband languishes in a foreign gaol for the crime of a social media post. This Author has her lorgnette trained upon all of it.

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, this Tuesday has delivered a budget shortfall, a political backstab before breakfast, and - most remarkably - a marmoset discovered abandoned on a north-west London omnibus. The new prime minister has not yet had time to find the kettle in his new residence, and already the knives are sharpened and the public finances are looking distinctly fragile. This Author has opinions on all of it, and decorum shall restrain only the mildest of them.