Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday brings a most extraordinary harvest of intrigue - a prime minister abandoned by his own financial patrons, a cruise ship haunted by a medieval-sounding pestilence, and a princess who has reduced an entire Italian city to rapturous hand-painted signage. This Author has observed much in her time, but today's dispatches are truly something to savour.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Wednesday brings democracy to the doorstep, a Princess bound for Italy, and thirty lorries operating under cover of darkness in the Essex countryside. This Author has questions about all three - and the answers are, as ever, more diverting than one might expect.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday brings dispatches that range from the gravely troubling to the gloriously absurd - and this Author has attended to every last one. Certain members of the Jewish community are hiding their faith beneath a baseball cap, a Prime Minister is performing remarkable feats of political gymnastics, and twenty-one celebrities are preparing to betray one another in the Scottish Highlands for our entertainment. Read on, if you dare.