"London was tired, seedy, cunning, ugly": a review of James Barlow's The Burden of Proof.
From Saturday, 10 March to Monday, 19 March, I read, courtesy of MeLCat inter-library loan, James Barlow's The Burden of Proof (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1968; Library of Congress Card Catalog Number 68-25743; 254 pps.). This was the basis of the film that nearly derailed Richard Burton's movie career, 1971's Villain.
James Barlow's 1968 novel The Burden of Proof is less a crime novel than a panaromic look at swinging London in the mid-1960s from the Establishment's (read: Tory) point of view; as such, it is an extremely jaundiced -- not to say racist, sexist, and homophobic -- portrait of a city and country that, in the author's view, is on the verge of collapse. Think of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire looking at the Eternal City c. AD 451, and you'll have a fair idea of the raison d'être of The Burden of Proof.
The character most widely remembered is that of Vic Dakin, portrayed in the 1971 movie Villain by Richard Burton: Dakin is a sadistic, misogynistic, homosexual psychopath and head of his own mob (or "firm") who can only find sexual gratification through violence; the only woman that he has any use for is his mother, whom he dotes on. Dakin's latest boytoy is an inveterate gambler, drugs peddler, tout to foreign tourists looking to sample London's more disreputable, if not out-and-out illegal, charms, and part-time pimp named Wolfe Lissner, a well-built, compact, stylish Jew who opens himself to Vic's aggression by absconding with some of his money and losing it at the gaming tables. Though Lissner's more-or-less regular girl is an upper-crust nineteen-year-old with a taste for slumming named Rosa, he is soon directed to a woman in her early 30s named Nan Rizzolo, who is being sued for divorce by her barrister husband due to her supposed sexual frigidity (which has more to do with her being unwilling to have sexual relations with him, or, indeed, one suspects, any member of her class: "For Henry was right: she was frigid in certain circumstances -- she couldn't unbend before an equal mind" [p. 124]), by the proprietor of the London casino at which she was financially embarrassed, a Greek named Barzun: Lissner proposes a scheme for her to repay Barzun that entails her participation in an orgy at the estate of the fey and debased Marquis of Keywood (a signifier of this -- and of the nobleman's probable homosexuality -- is his first name, Vivian), which an up-and-coming member of the lower house of Parliament, a forty-something MP named Gerald Draycott -- who had previously expressed his admiration for Nan -- will be attending. Meantime, Dakin plots to rob a factory of its payroll in conjunction with two other crime lords, while a dedicated and stolid Regional Crime Squad detective named Bob Matthews tries to find a crime big enough to pin on Dakin to take him out of circulation for a long time; however, the shameful state of the British judicial system makes this very unlikely indeed.....
The Burden of Proof takes its title from a feature of English law, cited in the epigraph (Barlow has three, count 'em, three) taken from Cecil C.H. Moriarity's Police Law: "The Onus or Burden of Proof of any fact rests on the person who alleges it, therefore the task of proving an alleged offence rests on the prosecution..." One suspects, after reading the novel, that Barlow would've rather that England had a more Napoleonic code of law, where the accused is guilty until proven innocent. The novel is divided into three sections: "The Scene," "The Action," and "The Burden of Proof"; unsurprisingly, the final section is the most problematic, the least interesting, and the most didactic. Indeed, borrowing some of the worst traditions of the Victorian novelists, Barlow brings in a deus ex machina -- the Christian deity, no less -- to bring the action of the novel to a partial close ("They were going to win, these ordinary little people, in the long run, because there was justice, truth could not be denied, a disappointed God could not be mocked forever"; p. 237), in the wake of a horrific tragedy that slays dozens of children and gives Matthews, who, like much of the police force, assists with the rescue and recovery, occasion for a religious/metaphysical discussion with a Salvation Army ("Sally") officer that ultimately bucks him up a bit.
The Burden of Proof is generously salted with Barlow's gloomy appraisals of contemporary English society, many of which verge -- and, in some cases, more than verge -- into the prejudicial remark. An early example occurs in the second chapter: "London was tired, seedy, cunning, ugly, here and there beautiful. In 1914 it had been at its most powerful; in 1940 at its most heroic. Now, in the 1960s, it was impotent: it had the principles and self-importance of an old queer" (p. 28).
Two chapters later, Barlow expands his critique to the country entire:
"England was impotent now, but talkative, petulant, critical and, in decline, intellectually arrogant. She was too articulate in relation to her negligible power to support her arguments. Nobody could do anything now without being accountable to the scorn of the liberal intellectuals in print or on television. England was too articulate at the top. Nobody, even in a Socialist liberal permissive society, had the slightest notion of the wishes of the people, out there beyond the great controversial shop of London. It was all done in the metropolis. And, too often, views were accepted by the Government because they were proposed by the new establishment of Socialist MPs, liberal journalists and the apparatus of dons, students, South Bank churchmen, pop singers, professional satirists and pundits, none of whom must be offended. England was still in social ferment, with new variations of the class war...."
-- p. 53
Matthews also unfavorably compares the grieving mothers affected by the tragedy with Nan Rizzolo and her roommate:
"Matthews remembered the stunned grieving mothers queueing outside the wooden church hall for the prvilege of seeing their smashed children and it was hard not to despise these two. This, too, was England; London was full of these smart, amoral, articulate people who knew how to avoid all the unpleasantness of the world by the time they were fifteen. They were, inevitably, more concerned about their lunch than justice."
-- p. 240
One of Matthews's superiors gently chides Matthews's wife, Mary, after she utters an uncharacteristically venomous word against the English masses: "'They're not a bad lot, the British public. A bit thoughtless when there's no danger'" (p. 250). This is apt to strike the reader as another instance of Barlow's nearly fascistic mindset: the masses must be in mortal peril for the good of their moral development.
Dakin was supposedly loosely based on Ronnie Kray, the dodgier of the Kray twins; yet, for all of that, Dakin never rises above a mass of clichés about how homosexuality inevitably leads to criminality, a viewpoint that is more commonly expressed these days by social conservatives' belief that all homosexuals are child molesters. Matthews, at a high-toned supper club with his wife to try to scout the opposition, spies Dakin, and thinks: "The most vicious psycho-homosexual criminal in London and he didn't touch alcohol. Nor did he like bad language or sex on TV. Yet he had sabered a Negro's buttocks" (p. 38). Of more interest are Dakin's Tory leanings, which dovetail with the political views of the pseudonymous criminal in Peter Crookston's biography Villain; when Dakin reads that the workers at the factory that he and his fellow crime bosses are planning to heist, Krabbs, are considering going on strike, he is incensed:
"It was the principle of the thing which annoyed Vic. Not a principle recognized in textbooks or the House of Commons but a very real human one. He'd gone to a lot of trouble arranging this heist; he'd hired people, stolen a few motors. And this was because it was necessary -- this was the ingrained truth of the principle -- necessary for Mum, the scores of bouncers and musclemen; there were insurance problems, things to buy.... You couldn't look after a business if a thousand fools at Krabbs were indecisive and changed their routine, which was the business relationship that existed between you and Krabbs. That it should be broken was outrageous. It was very nearly unfair. Who did they think they were messing about with, these figures on the progress graph of Vic Dakin? Did they think they had rights?"
-- p. 153
This is reminiscent of Johnny Caspar's whining about "ethics" at the beginning of the Coen brothers' 1990 movie Miller's Crossing.
Dakin also has a rant against the common people during a one-sided conversation with Lissner towards the end of the book:
"'These people are nothing,' he whispered savagely. 'They're statistics. They're curves on a lot of graphs. Birthrates and VD and Protestants and readers of the Daily Express and purchasers of soap powder and visitors to Weymouth. They cry out to be exploited. They think because they can vote in Draycott they're powerful, it's a democracy. I'll tell you what they are. Fools. There's nothing special about them even when they're English. Blood flows from a hole in the head whether you're English or African or a Chinese tram driver. Well, you know, don't you? Suckers to be exploited,' he concluded in contempt."
-- p. 227
The strongest part of The Burden of Proof is the hijacking of Krabbs' payroll (pps. 154-65), which is a fine example of how "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley"; but Barlow also has short disquisitions on subjects touched upon in his novel, such as playing roulette at a casino:
"Lissner played roulette bearing in mind Cardan's law of probability. In a game of chance all players had an equal likelihood of winning -- in the long run. This meant not an evening's play but infinity, and the closer Lissner could get to it the better. In ten thousand tosses of a coin the proportion of heads would deviate by less than one percent from the probable proportion of one half, and as the number of tosses increased the deviation from equal proportions of heads and tails decreased. In practice the long run which equalized couldn't be carried out -- Lissner would have to stand at the table for years. From the management's point of view he and others did, and they therefore had to have the zero on the wheel to defeat the very real theoretical enemies of time and money represented by continual bets placed by innumerable people. The management also gave themselves the artificial advantage of fees for bets, seat charges and of paying off their losses at less than the true mathematical odds. In the true long run of an infinity the management couldn't make a profit even from the losers, because in that time the losers' amount would even up with the winners', so they paid out less than the true odds, the percentage differing from casino to casino and game to game.
"The odds in the short run of a lifetime working against Lissner -- something he didn't take into account -- were increased because he was a compulsive gambler. If he won a fortune tonight he'd be back to lose it, and as he could not live forever he could not expect to come out even..."
-- pps. 68-9
There is also this overview of the intersection of police work with the judicial system:
"It was important to get results quickly, for if there was a period between the crime and the interrogations the villains would have alibis, usually in terms of time and where they were. After some hours the police had an assembly of information, to which they wanted to attach people, see if the evidence fitted and proved things. They tried to link this crime to jobs in the past, but these days too many people went out and beat up pay clerks with pick-axe handles and made off in stolen cars. It was a sign of economic prosperity or something.
"There was also -- given too much time -- the dangerous possibility of fixing people to give evidence. It had frequently happened that if no one could be fixed to give evidence -- or the evidence itself would have made that perjury all too clear -- the villains had fixed jurors. Where disagreement by one juror had been sufficient minor criminals had sat in the court and decided which juror might be amenable to fear or prompted by £200. Perhaps £500 if it was important. Just say No, and the judge had to dismiss that jury. If it happened again with a second jury -- and it had -- the Crown offered no further evidence. It was a rare juror who overcame terror and stood up in court to say he'd been approached. The fight against the new criminals did not end with their apprehension. But with a majority verdict of ten who could condemn, it meant that three people would have to be persuaded to commit perjury."
-- p. 177
Barlow has no scruples in calling out England's judiciary as part of the country's problems:
"The judge here today to help in the decision for or against Dakin, Lowis, Fletcher and Heusen was an old man who had been selected as a judge in the normal way from the country's barristers. He was no more than adequate, for, contrary to public opinion, judges were not a very brilliant élite. This one, like most, had a limited experience of life, however much of life he may have listened to.... He was rather nervously preoccupied with the interpretation of the law, afraid just a little (like the jury and some witnesses) of being made a fool of in the only way which would earn him the disregard of his fellows, namely by making a legal mistake. The revision of the law didn't interest him; it was enough to comprehend as it stood.
"He had not been in a public bar for forty years or in a café or cinema for sixteen. He was accorded the pomp which belonged to medieval times and this tended to guard him from the realities of life. Because he heard so many things in court and others at the High Table of his Inn of Court, at the Reform Club and the Oxford and Cambridge, and from the pages of the Times, he was able to, and often did, offer opinions on matters which interested or irritated him. He had recently ordered out of court a girl wearing a mini-skirt and had then spoken for five minutes on modern morality and youth. But in fact he knew about them only from the pages of newspapers. He regarded with amused contempt the psychiatrists who came before him. He was honest and perhaps earned a quarter of his £10,000 a year. He would not have believed it if he had been told that one witness now about to appear before him had been intimidated and that one counsel was more or less employed by gangsters, not in a condition of impartiality (for anyone is entitled to employ a barrister if he can find the money), but of willing purchase. He sat for 225 days each year with the wig over his head and his glasses cutting his nose slightly, and believed that England was unique because her government and law were not corrupt. But neither was true any more."
-- pps. 193-94
There are also interesting tidbits sprinkled through the book, such as the fact that vehicle license plates in England, at least in the 1960s, were of different sizes and had to be cut to fit a particular model of car or lorry (p. 176), or the fact that "fuzz" as a somewhat disrespectful slang term for the police was in use in England from at least the latter half of the 1960s (first mention is on p. 46). Some trivia is questionable: Heathrow Airport is referred to as "Heath Row" (p. 28; its Wikipedia page makes no mention of it ever having been called that), and while the Oxford Dictionary's website notes that "berk," meaning "a stupid person" (from the "1930s: abbreviation of Berkeley or Berkshire Hunt, rhyming slang for 'cunt'"), can also be spelled as "burk" or "burke," in the U.S. edition of The Burden of Proof it is spelled as "Burke" (see, for example, p. 158, p. 160, and p. 246): one suspects that the copy editors were unaware of the meaning of the word, and assumed that it was intended to reference a person named Burke. Barlow also throws in a head-scratcher that is of a piece with Ian Fleming's fatuous assertion that homosexuals are unable to whistle: "Matthews was perfectly aware that epileptics tended toward lies, violence and prejudice" (p. 180); surely nothing is more prejudicial than Barlow's whole-hearted acceptance of an egregious superstition last given scientific credence in the 19th century.
The Burden of Proof was the last novel that Barlow had published before he left England for Tasmania; his non-fictional polemic, Goodbye England, was published the following year, in 1969. While there is much about English society that Barlow criticizes here -- and the fact that the MP Draycroft's involvement in anti-apartheid groups (called here "the Anti-South Africa Society" [p. 252]), anti-colonial groups (particularly African ones, a fact that Matthews's wife Mary waspishly disapproves of, partly because she "had a sister in Rhodesia"; p. 37), and anti-Vietnam War groups is held up for, at best, ridicule and suspicion, is yet another reason why one suspects that Barlow's views were more than a little sympathetic to Enoch Powell's -- the police are not among them: it is puzzling why Simon & Schuster, the U.S. publishers of The Burden of Proof, chose to omit Barlow's dedication: "To the policemen of England, who are still the salt of the earth." Barlow would publish two more novels before his death in 1973: Liner in 1970 and Both Your Houses in 1971.
Since Netflix doesn't offer a DVD copy of Villain for rental, the closest I'm likely to come to seeing it is in the stills scattered around the web (such as the one below: that's Richard Burton as Vic Dakin on the left, and Ian McShane as Wolfe Lissner on the right), clips on YouTube, or the celebrity caricatures of "Vince Dakin" and "Wolfe Lovejoy" in Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume III, Chapter Two (a.k.a. Century 1969) (the illustration shown below is from p. 29, panel 2; the figure in the background is the LoEG version of Jack Carter, as portrayed by Michael Caine in the seminal 1971 British gangster movie Get Carter).
James Barlow's 1968 novel The Burden of Proof is less a crime novel than a panaromic look at swinging London in the mid-1960s from the Establishment's (read: Tory) point of view; as such, it is an extremely jaundiced -- not to say racist, sexist, and homophobic -- portrait of a city and country that, in the author's view, is on the verge of collapse. Think of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire looking at the Eternal City c. AD 451, and you'll have a fair idea of the raison d'être of The Burden of Proof.
The character most widely remembered is that of Vic Dakin, portrayed in the 1971 movie Villain by Richard Burton: Dakin is a sadistic, misogynistic, homosexual psychopath and head of his own mob (or "firm") who can only find sexual gratification through violence; the only woman that he has any use for is his mother, whom he dotes on. Dakin's latest boytoy is an inveterate gambler, drugs peddler, tout to foreign tourists looking to sample London's more disreputable, if not out-and-out illegal, charms, and part-time pimp named Wolfe Lissner, a well-built, compact, stylish Jew who opens himself to Vic's aggression by absconding with some of his money and losing it at the gaming tables. Though Lissner's more-or-less regular girl is an upper-crust nineteen-year-old with a taste for slumming named Rosa, he is soon directed to a woman in her early 30s named Nan Rizzolo, who is being sued for divorce by her barrister husband due to her supposed sexual frigidity (which has more to do with her being unwilling to have sexual relations with him, or, indeed, one suspects, any member of her class: "For Henry was right: she was frigid in certain circumstances -- she couldn't unbend before an equal mind" [p. 124]), by the proprietor of the London casino at which she was financially embarrassed, a Greek named Barzun: Lissner proposes a scheme for her to repay Barzun that entails her participation in an orgy at the estate of the fey and debased Marquis of Keywood (a signifier of this -- and of the nobleman's probable homosexuality -- is his first name, Vivian), which an up-and-coming member of the lower house of Parliament, a forty-something MP named Gerald Draycott -- who had previously expressed his admiration for Nan -- will be attending. Meantime, Dakin plots to rob a factory of its payroll in conjunction with two other crime lords, while a dedicated and stolid Regional Crime Squad detective named Bob Matthews tries to find a crime big enough to pin on Dakin to take him out of circulation for a long time; however, the shameful state of the British judicial system makes this very unlikely indeed.....
The Burden of Proof takes its title from a feature of English law, cited in the epigraph (Barlow has three, count 'em, three) taken from Cecil C.H. Moriarity's Police Law: "The Onus or Burden of Proof of any fact rests on the person who alleges it, therefore the task of proving an alleged offence rests on the prosecution..." One suspects, after reading the novel, that Barlow would've rather that England had a more Napoleonic code of law, where the accused is guilty until proven innocent. The novel is divided into three sections: "The Scene," "The Action," and "The Burden of Proof"; unsurprisingly, the final section is the most problematic, the least interesting, and the most didactic. Indeed, borrowing some of the worst traditions of the Victorian novelists, Barlow brings in a deus ex machina -- the Christian deity, no less -- to bring the action of the novel to a partial close ("They were going to win, these ordinary little people, in the long run, because there was justice, truth could not be denied, a disappointed God could not be mocked forever"; p. 237), in the wake of a horrific tragedy that slays dozens of children and gives Matthews, who, like much of the police force, assists with the rescue and recovery, occasion for a religious/metaphysical discussion with a Salvation Army ("Sally") officer that ultimately bucks him up a bit.
The Burden of Proof is generously salted with Barlow's gloomy appraisals of contemporary English society, many of which verge -- and, in some cases, more than verge -- into the prejudicial remark. An early example occurs in the second chapter: "London was tired, seedy, cunning, ugly, here and there beautiful. In 1914 it had been at its most powerful; in 1940 at its most heroic. Now, in the 1960s, it was impotent: it had the principles and self-importance of an old queer" (p. 28).
Two chapters later, Barlow expands his critique to the country entire:
"England was impotent now, but talkative, petulant, critical and, in decline, intellectually arrogant. She was too articulate in relation to her negligible power to support her arguments. Nobody could do anything now without being accountable to the scorn of the liberal intellectuals in print or on television. England was too articulate at the top. Nobody, even in a Socialist liberal permissive society, had the slightest notion of the wishes of the people, out there beyond the great controversial shop of London. It was all done in the metropolis. And, too often, views were accepted by the Government because they were proposed by the new establishment of Socialist MPs, liberal journalists and the apparatus of dons, students, South Bank churchmen, pop singers, professional satirists and pundits, none of whom must be offended. England was still in social ferment, with new variations of the class war...."
-- p. 53
Matthews also unfavorably compares the grieving mothers affected by the tragedy with Nan Rizzolo and her roommate:
"Matthews remembered the stunned grieving mothers queueing outside the wooden church hall for the prvilege of seeing their smashed children and it was hard not to despise these two. This, too, was England; London was full of these smart, amoral, articulate people who knew how to avoid all the unpleasantness of the world by the time they were fifteen. They were, inevitably, more concerned about their lunch than justice."
-- p. 240
One of Matthews's superiors gently chides Matthews's wife, Mary, after she utters an uncharacteristically venomous word against the English masses: "'They're not a bad lot, the British public. A bit thoughtless when there's no danger'" (p. 250). This is apt to strike the reader as another instance of Barlow's nearly fascistic mindset: the masses must be in mortal peril for the good of their moral development.
Dakin was supposedly loosely based on Ronnie Kray, the dodgier of the Kray twins; yet, for all of that, Dakin never rises above a mass of clichés about how homosexuality inevitably leads to criminality, a viewpoint that is more commonly expressed these days by social conservatives' belief that all homosexuals are child molesters. Matthews, at a high-toned supper club with his wife to try to scout the opposition, spies Dakin, and thinks: "The most vicious psycho-homosexual criminal in London and he didn't touch alcohol. Nor did he like bad language or sex on TV. Yet he had sabered a Negro's buttocks" (p. 38). Of more interest are Dakin's Tory leanings, which dovetail with the political views of the pseudonymous criminal in Peter Crookston's biography Villain; when Dakin reads that the workers at the factory that he and his fellow crime bosses are planning to heist, Krabbs, are considering going on strike, he is incensed:
"It was the principle of the thing which annoyed Vic. Not a principle recognized in textbooks or the House of Commons but a very real human one. He'd gone to a lot of trouble arranging this heist; he'd hired people, stolen a few motors. And this was because it was necessary -- this was the ingrained truth of the principle -- necessary for Mum, the scores of bouncers and musclemen; there were insurance problems, things to buy.... You couldn't look after a business if a thousand fools at Krabbs were indecisive and changed their routine, which was the business relationship that existed between you and Krabbs. That it should be broken was outrageous. It was very nearly unfair. Who did they think they were messing about with, these figures on the progress graph of Vic Dakin? Did they think they had rights?"
-- p. 153
This is reminiscent of Johnny Caspar's whining about "ethics" at the beginning of the Coen brothers' 1990 movie Miller's Crossing.
Dakin also has a rant against the common people during a one-sided conversation with Lissner towards the end of the book:
"'These people are nothing,' he whispered savagely. 'They're statistics. They're curves on a lot of graphs. Birthrates and VD and Protestants and readers of the Daily Express and purchasers of soap powder and visitors to Weymouth. They cry out to be exploited. They think because they can vote in Draycott they're powerful, it's a democracy. I'll tell you what they are. Fools. There's nothing special about them even when they're English. Blood flows from a hole in the head whether you're English or African or a Chinese tram driver. Well, you know, don't you? Suckers to be exploited,' he concluded in contempt."
-- p. 227
The strongest part of The Burden of Proof is the hijacking of Krabbs' payroll (pps. 154-65), which is a fine example of how "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley"; but Barlow also has short disquisitions on subjects touched upon in his novel, such as playing roulette at a casino:
"Lissner played roulette bearing in mind Cardan's law of probability. In a game of chance all players had an equal likelihood of winning -- in the long run. This meant not an evening's play but infinity, and the closer Lissner could get to it the better. In ten thousand tosses of a coin the proportion of heads would deviate by less than one percent from the probable proportion of one half, and as the number of tosses increased the deviation from equal proportions of heads and tails decreased. In practice the long run which equalized couldn't be carried out -- Lissner would have to stand at the table for years. From the management's point of view he and others did, and they therefore had to have the zero on the wheel to defeat the very real theoretical enemies of time and money represented by continual bets placed by innumerable people. The management also gave themselves the artificial advantage of fees for bets, seat charges and of paying off their losses at less than the true mathematical odds. In the true long run of an infinity the management couldn't make a profit even from the losers, because in that time the losers' amount would even up with the winners', so they paid out less than the true odds, the percentage differing from casino to casino and game to game.
"The odds in the short run of a lifetime working against Lissner -- something he didn't take into account -- were increased because he was a compulsive gambler. If he won a fortune tonight he'd be back to lose it, and as he could not live forever he could not expect to come out even..."
-- pps. 68-9
There is also this overview of the intersection of police work with the judicial system:
"It was important to get results quickly, for if there was a period between the crime and the interrogations the villains would have alibis, usually in terms of time and where they were. After some hours the police had an assembly of information, to which they wanted to attach people, see if the evidence fitted and proved things. They tried to link this crime to jobs in the past, but these days too many people went out and beat up pay clerks with pick-axe handles and made off in stolen cars. It was a sign of economic prosperity or something.
"There was also -- given too much time -- the dangerous possibility of fixing people to give evidence. It had frequently happened that if no one could be fixed to give evidence -- or the evidence itself would have made that perjury all too clear -- the villains had fixed jurors. Where disagreement by one juror had been sufficient minor criminals had sat in the court and decided which juror might be amenable to fear or prompted by £200. Perhaps £500 if it was important. Just say No, and the judge had to dismiss that jury. If it happened again with a second jury -- and it had -- the Crown offered no further evidence. It was a rare juror who overcame terror and stood up in court to say he'd been approached. The fight against the new criminals did not end with their apprehension. But with a majority verdict of ten who could condemn, it meant that three people would have to be persuaded to commit perjury."
-- p. 177
Barlow has no scruples in calling out England's judiciary as part of the country's problems:
"The judge here today to help in the decision for or against Dakin, Lowis, Fletcher and Heusen was an old man who had been selected as a judge in the normal way from the country's barristers. He was no more than adequate, for, contrary to public opinion, judges were not a very brilliant élite. This one, like most, had a limited experience of life, however much of life he may have listened to.... He was rather nervously preoccupied with the interpretation of the law, afraid just a little (like the jury and some witnesses) of being made a fool of in the only way which would earn him the disregard of his fellows, namely by making a legal mistake. The revision of the law didn't interest him; it was enough to comprehend as it stood.
"He had not been in a public bar for forty years or in a café or cinema for sixteen. He was accorded the pomp which belonged to medieval times and this tended to guard him from the realities of life. Because he heard so many things in court and others at the High Table of his Inn of Court, at the Reform Club and the Oxford and Cambridge, and from the pages of the Times, he was able to, and often did, offer opinions on matters which interested or irritated him. He had recently ordered out of court a girl wearing a mini-skirt and had then spoken for five minutes on modern morality and youth. But in fact he knew about them only from the pages of newspapers. He regarded with amused contempt the psychiatrists who came before him. He was honest and perhaps earned a quarter of his £10,000 a year. He would not have believed it if he had been told that one witness now about to appear before him had been intimidated and that one counsel was more or less employed by gangsters, not in a condition of impartiality (for anyone is entitled to employ a barrister if he can find the money), but of willing purchase. He sat for 225 days each year with the wig over his head and his glasses cutting his nose slightly, and believed that England was unique because her government and law were not corrupt. But neither was true any more."
-- pps. 193-94
There are also interesting tidbits sprinkled through the book, such as the fact that vehicle license plates in England, at least in the 1960s, were of different sizes and had to be cut to fit a particular model of car or lorry (p. 176), or the fact that "fuzz" as a somewhat disrespectful slang term for the police was in use in England from at least the latter half of the 1960s (first mention is on p. 46). Some trivia is questionable: Heathrow Airport is referred to as "Heath Row" (p. 28; its Wikipedia page makes no mention of it ever having been called that), and while the Oxford Dictionary's website notes that "berk," meaning "a stupid person" (from the "1930s: abbreviation of Berkeley or Berkshire Hunt, rhyming slang for 'cunt'"), can also be spelled as "burk" or "burke," in the U.S. edition of The Burden of Proof it is spelled as "Burke" (see, for example, p. 158, p. 160, and p. 246): one suspects that the copy editors were unaware of the meaning of the word, and assumed that it was intended to reference a person named Burke. Barlow also throws in a head-scratcher that is of a piece with Ian Fleming's fatuous assertion that homosexuals are unable to whistle: "Matthews was perfectly aware that epileptics tended toward lies, violence and prejudice" (p. 180); surely nothing is more prejudicial than Barlow's whole-hearted acceptance of an egregious superstition last given scientific credence in the 19th century.
The Burden of Proof was the last novel that Barlow had published before he left England for Tasmania; his non-fictional polemic, Goodbye England, was published the following year, in 1969. While there is much about English society that Barlow criticizes here -- and the fact that the MP Draycroft's involvement in anti-apartheid groups (called here "the Anti-South Africa Society" [p. 252]), anti-colonial groups (particularly African ones, a fact that Matthews's wife Mary waspishly disapproves of, partly because she "had a sister in Rhodesia"; p. 37), and anti-Vietnam War groups is held up for, at best, ridicule and suspicion, is yet another reason why one suspects that Barlow's views were more than a little sympathetic to Enoch Powell's -- the police are not among them: it is puzzling why Simon & Schuster, the U.S. publishers of The Burden of Proof, chose to omit Barlow's dedication: "To the policemen of England, who are still the salt of the earth." Barlow would publish two more novels before his death in 1973: Liner in 1970 and Both Your Houses in 1971.
Since Netflix doesn't offer a DVD copy of Villain for rental, the closest I'm likely to come to seeing it is in the stills scattered around the web (such as the one below: that's Richard Burton as Vic Dakin on the left, and Ian McShane as Wolfe Lissner on the right), clips on YouTube, or the celebrity caricatures of "Vince Dakin" and "Wolfe Lovejoy" in Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume III, Chapter Two (a.k.a. Century 1969) (the illustration shown below is from p. 29, panel 2; the figure in the background is the LoEG version of Jack Carter, as portrayed by Michael Caine in the seminal 1971 British gangster movie Get Carter).