My fifteen-year-old nephew by marriage recently pitched up on his grandmother’s doorstep at 1.30am, half drunk and wholly terrified after being chased through the streets by a gang with knives. This is a whole lot younger than I was when I started hanging out with people who settled arguments that way. More shocking, I think, is that it all happened in Winchester, a town of stultifying wealth and respectability.
Out of a population of 107,000, 353 are officially unemployed. I do hope the knives young Piers was threatened with weren’t plate.