How Beautiful His Feet....
HAT well-known, that almost immoderately well-known piece, "Policeman’s Holiday"-tum-tum-tiddly-iddly-i-to-tay-is, though it has taken me a long time to realise, a profound social document. Together with the introduction of the policeman into the Harlequinade and that immortal moment in "The Man Who Was Thursday"-"But this is absurd!" cried the policeman. clasping his
hands with an excitement unsual in one of his profession, "but this is preposterous!" — and similar cultural gems, it sheds a revealing light on a unique characteristic of English life. Spain sees its Civil Guards as
symbols of oppression and _ terror, America its police force as types of the backstairs of municipal politics; French policemen in works such as Simenon’s carry an almost physical impression of the dingy despair of the Parisian underworld; but the English mythology turns the policeman into a figure of fairy-tales and writes elfin music about his light fantastic toe. You may treat this with admiration or scepticism as you choose, but the fact remains unique. The English genius is at its best-in its faculty of making poetry out of the dullest details of city life; it is in Dickens and even in the least successful works of the late J. M. Barrie.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 337, 7 December 1945, Page 9
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202How Beautiful His Feet.... New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 337, 7 December 1945, Page 9
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