Philip Hensher has narrated this article for you to listen to.
Like most novelists, I am a firm adherent to the W.H. Davies principle of finding time to stand and stare. I was once sauntering down Regent Street when a gentleman hared out of a department store, closely followed by two rather healthier specimens. They flung him to the ground, upon which large quantities of merchandise started falling from his pockets. I was fascinated, both by the level of violence the shop’s security was using and by what a captured thief actually says when he’s being subdued. (Clue: not ‘You got me bang to rights.’) After a moment or two another bloke came over to me and a couple of others gawping on the public pavement. ‘Move along there,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing for you to see here.’ I replied as anyone would when a stranger starts ordering you around: ‘Who the bleeding hell are you?’
The same question came to mind when reading Beyond Order.
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