Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings confessions from the highest reaches of the Secret Intelligence Service, heartbreak from the corridors of the National Health Society, and a palace dispute so combustible it could warm an entire London season. This Author has rarely set down her pen with a heavier hand - nor, she confesses, a more astonished expression.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday brings a Palace rebuttal of such exquisite precision that this Author nearly applauded, a drug two years overdue that has arrived at last for a thousand women, and a stranger who read a plea on the digital salons and promptly donated a kidney - because why not. The day is grave, the day is warm, and the day is, in its way, rather remarkable.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings a revenge served in black silk, a parliamentary vote that has reduced this Author to uncharacteristic solemnity, and a guilty plea twenty-eight years in the making - all of which together suggest that justice, like fashion, operates entirely on its own schedule. There is also the small matter of nineteen families in the West Midlands living from their car boots, which quite puts the ton's usual complaints into perspective. Your lorgnette is required.