At the end of this book there is a story about apples (which I repeat as inconclusive proof that I have fought my way through its five hundred pages). An Inspector from a Northern Police Force is musing on the number of people who long for the 'good old days' of the local Bobby. 'Everyone always tells me how they remember being cuffed around the ear by their local Bobby for stealing an apple.' The Inspector reflects that 'the streets of this city would be littered with apples, it would be a forest of trees, not just an orchard, for all the people that have said that to me.' Yet he has never met a single policeman who remembers stopping anyone for stealing an apple. Like Dixon of Dock Green, the cheerful Bobby who was always around the place when any trouble broke out, and whatever the temptation was fair, even-handed and cheerful, it is part all a mirage of the good old days - which were, in fact, bad.

LRB 6 July 1989 | PDF Download