At least we still have wine

Even in recent heat, the English summer can be magical. As long as there is shade, a pool and a steady supply of cooling wine, there is so much to enjoy. Trees, flowers, songbirds, butterflies: dolce far niente works here too.

But thinking can be the snake which insinuates itself into Eden. Susan Hill’s Simon Serrailler books are always excellent train reading and the latest was no exception, even if the principal character always puts one in mind of Turner’s supposed reply to someone who said that they had never seen a sunset like the one which he had painted. ‘But don’t you wish you could?’ It is hard to believe that there are many actual policemen like Simon Serrailler – more’s the pity.

There are other reasons for pity. Judging by her oeuvre, I would assume that Dame Susan is a conservative, both small and large ‘C’. She is also, I take it, an Anglican, with deep though unostentatious roots in old European high culture, and in old England. Yet in the latest book, her fictional England, centred on the cathedral city of Lafferton, is menaced. The shire is being invaded by the orcs. Drug dealers cross county lines, trying to corrupt children and ready to commit murder. The chief constable, an admirable enough fellow, seems to spend half his time wrestling with inadequate budgets and the other half standing down police operations which cannot be afforded.

In the local hospital, the nurses are far too demoralised to care about their patients, while most of the doctors we encounter seem to be knackered. Is this a true picture of much of modern England? I have a horrible suspicion that Susan Hill is not exaggerating and that the answer is ‘yes’.