Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday delivers a reckoning of the most uncomfortable sort - institutions found wanting, laws that reward the wrong party, and a queue so long it has quite defeated a generation of young drivers. There is also a comedian weeping rather gloriously on a stage, and a naturalist turning one hundred with more grace than the entire apparatus of government. Your humble Author has read every word so that you need not face it unprepared.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings dispatches that span continents and cross every register from the heartbreaking to the combustible - and one story in which the very earth beneath respectable houses has simply given up. This Author has set aside her sharpest wit for the occasion, though she has by no means set aside her lorgnette.