Dearest Gentle Reader, today's dispatch brings royal confessions of torchlight reading, a Northern Province stand-off three decades in the making, and a liberated prisoner whose gratitude to the state is - shall we say - uniquely expressed. There is also a gentleman of the Verdant Society who refuses to depart, and a constabulary official undone by the very technology meant to protect us all. Hover your lorgnette close, for the details are quite extraordinary.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Monday delivers a quartet of dispatches grave enough to give one pause and one glittering discovery to restore the faith. Four thousand souls face uncertain futures at a most celebrated carriage house, a beloved news presenter reveals a battle fought in dignified silence - and a Victorian lady who talked her way into a museum with no qualifications whatsoever has finally received the recognition she deserved some one hundred years ago. This Author has opinions on all of it, naturally.