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 Friday has delivered this Author a most unsettling collection of dispatches - terror in the Capital, a fashion magnate's ruinous evening, and a fishy deception of the most literal variety. Whether your appetite is for scandal, justice, or merely a reliable piece of cod, today's column promises to leave you both informed and rather unsettled.

Dearest Gentle Reader, Thursday has arrived carrying rather more gravity than one might wish, though it has not entirely forsaken the absurd. A terrorist incident in the Capital, a King who apparently outmanoeuvred a president, and a mysterious statue that appeared overnight beside Florence Nightingale - this Author has questions, and she suspects you do too.