THE horse box draws into the kennels and George lets horses and hounds out. There is no need to ask how it went. He is hunched over and clenched with anger and sorrow, like a boy at a funeral. The great conservative philosopher Edmund Burke described rural society as being made up of little platoons. This platoon, my platoon, has received a devastating blow to its morale.
‘Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.’ For