The ‘Foxy Knoxy’ case has stirred a deep prurience about women and murder

It was true in Orwell’s day and it’s no less true now: there is nothing the British public likes more than a good, old-fashioned, grisly murder. Sixty-odd years ago, when Orwell wrote The Decline of the English Murder, the crucial ingredient was some hidden, shameful, sexual misdemeanour – almost always adultery, but sometimes homosexuality. The implication being that back then committing murder, and thus risking a possible death sentence from the courts, was preferable to some sordid secret leaking out. The English murders, the ones the public liked, were those committed in desperation by the deeply ashamed – a consequence, as Orwell saw it, of a hypocritical society.

We have changed as a nation. The liberalisation of the divorce laws means that one no longer needs to kill one’s wife in order to facilitate an extramarital affair. You can just leave and few people, save for your ex-wife, will think any the worse of you for it.