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Times Online – Copper-bottomed snobbery, by Ben Macintyre<br/> The police in Britain do not need to read poetry but they should reflect the society they serve

Dixon of Dock Green, with his comforting working-class accent (“evenin’ awl”) and bicycle clips, is the mythical British policeman: avuncular and wise, tough on the dangerous classes, reassuring for the middle classes, and never remotely uppity towards the ruling classes. He never thumped anyone, never swore and he knew his place. You wouldn’t catch Dixon of Dock Green expatiating on evolutionary theory with trendy novelists….

In more recent popular culture, fictional policemen like Adam Dalgleish and Inspector Morse are portrayed as cultured, intellectual types, devotees of classical music and poetry.

What about Inspector Lynley? But anyway, those are detectives. You can’t talk about Dixon of Dock Green on his bicycle and then switch to the sorts of detectives that have novels written about them precisely because they’re so unusual. Their uniqueness is the starting point of the story. They’re never treated as normal in the books.