Are villages more poisonous places than towns? Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, thought the country more wicked than the city, and so does Anthony Horowitz, the screenwriter who has taken over the popular series Midsomer Murders (featuring a fictional Oxfordshire village with a higher homicide rate than the Bronx).

“English villages are special places where hatred and mistrust and suspicion and anger and bitterness have a natural place to grow,” opines Mr Horowitz, who also wrote the compelling Foyle’s War.