Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday brings a transatlantic telephone call of splendid bluntness, a defence plan as absent as good sense in certain quarters, and a kebab scandal so audacious it deserves its own chapter in the annals of culinary deception. Plus - a royal wedding to restore one's faith in the possibility of a happy ending, if one can only get past the fraudulent mutton first.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday brings an American gentleman offering opinions nobody requested, a farewell to one of television's most beloved librarians, and a Euromillions winner whose story ends in a manner that defies all justice. This Author has also received the most welcome news from the Principality - news that has quite restored her faith in the possibility of happy endings, if not in the Vice-President of the American Colonies.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Thursday opens with tragedy in a Devon field, a pharmaceutical miracle twenty years in the making, and a controversy about lapel badges that threatens to consume more energy than the policies they symbolise. This Author has also noted a new arrival to the ton - unnamed, genderless, and already more mysterious than half the Cabinet.