Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday brings a royal tour into peril, a prime minister musing aloud on the unmentionable, and a letter sent to a hospital bed in the Philippines that closes a door - and opens a very great many questions. This Author has read every dispatch with widened eyes and a steadied hand, and invites you to do the same.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday brings a mother's sacrifice in the Bahamas, a contract killer lurking in the corridors of the Conservative Party, and the Metropolitan Constabulary investigating its own conduct in the most tangled of royal affairs. If you had hoped the month might close quietly - this Author must advise you to abandon that hope at once.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings a hush over Paphos, a tremor through the banking houses, and a reckoning long overdue in the corridors of a great children's hospital. Viscount Farage's Reform Society, meanwhile, continues to produce bad apples at a rate that would alarm the most patient of orchardists - and This Author has thoughts on all of it.