More than half a century ago, George Orwell wrote an essay about the decline of the English murder. Since the 1990s, Theodore Dalrymple has witnessed its modern variety in real life. For over a quarter of a century he has treated and examined many more murderers than most as a prison doctor, psychiatrist, and court expert in some of Britain's most deprived areas. Here, he delves deep into his life of personal encounters with the murderous underclass to determine what has changed overtime and what has not. Inimitably, his unique portrait of modern criminals is at the same time a parable of dysfunction in our own culture. Through his experiences, he exposes today's vicious cult of denial, blaming and psychobabble that hides behind a corrosive sentiment of caring. Illustrated with scores of eye-opening, true-life vignettes, The Knife Went In is in turn hilariously funny, chillingly horrifying, and always unexpectedly revealing. Taken together, this lifetime of experience is a clear and unsentimental mirror in which we view modern progress without its varnish.
The Knife Went In 5 The Knife Went In 5 1 The State of the Modern Murder 2 Decision Time 3 Sticks and Stones 4 Prison Officers 5 The Money of Frauds 6 Suicides 7 Dr No 8 Encouraging Thwacks 9 Rule Forty Five 10 The Thin Blue Squiggle 11 Recent Activity in Homicides 12 Psychiatric Fungus 13 No Good Act... 14 Loud Pleasures 15 A Simple Caution 16 Drunken Stress 17 Evil Characters 18 Manic Mitigations Pride Goeth...
`A razor-sharp expose of our broken society... Both funny and a badly needed corrective to conventional wisdom... hugely readable ... gripping real-life stories... tells a deep truth about the sort of society we have become. A future historian, a century hence, will learn more about 21st Century Britain from this book than from any official document. So will you. Please read it.' Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday `Nobody has observed the... fallacies of modern England with a clearer eye, or a more intelligent quill. It would be nice to know that the BBC had heard of him because we could expect to hear him deliver next year's Reith Lectures.' Sunday Telegraph `Dalrymple is... [o]ne of the most interesting men of our times... There is nothing in his tale to celebrate, yet in the telling he deserves the commendation of anybody who values human civilization.' The Times
