Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday delivers matters both grave and grotesque - a military academy harbouring secrets that demand a reckoning, a Cambridge professor who has chosen exit over explanation, and an undertaker who thought a letter might serve where twenty years behind bars had not. This Author has opinions on all of it, and is entirely unafraid to share them.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday brings mountains that have claimed the irreplaceable, an undertaker whose betrayal of the bereaved beggars belief, and a ballot paper so long it has made the very polling tables inadequate - and that is before we reach the national park that has sold its own name for the price of an electric motor car. Your lorgnette will be quite exhausted by the end.

Dearest Gentle Reader, today's dispatch contains a funeral director of quite spectacular cupidity, a Prime Minister already discovering the joys of telling his own Cabinet the word 'no', and a soap actor whose Wednesday evening took a turn not entirely befitting the role of Alfie Moon. This Author's lorgnette has been working rather hard - do read on.