A 荒涼とした 殺人... and a country in 騒動: 殺人 At? Wrotham Hill By Diana Souhami

By Kathryn Hughes

Published: 12:39 BST, 22 October 2012 | Updated: 12:48 BST, 22 October 2012

殺人 At? Wrotham Hill By Diana Souhami. Quercus £18.99? % £16.99 inc p&p?

率ing:

One 荒涼とした autumn morning in 1946, a lorry driver 選ぶd up a 女性（の） hitchhiker in Kent and strangled her. いっそう少なく than six months later, the man was hanged for 殺人.

The 犠牲者, Dagmar Peters, was an eccentric spinster, her 殺し屋 a petty どろぼう with a violent past. No one believed for a moment Sidney Sinclair’s defence about how Peters ? still a virgin at 48 ? had pestered him for money in return for sex.

Diana Souhami deftly uses this 淡褐色 tale as a way of 開始 up the realities of life in 戦後の Britain. She shows us a country where everyone is so shaken by the horrors of the 衝突, they are still puzzling out what it means to live a decent life.

荒廃: The Blitz made it 平易な for people to reinvent themselves

Decent is 正確に／まさに the 権利 word for Peters. She had been 爆弾d out of her London home during the Blitz and had moved to a tin hut on a bit of scrubland in Kent, for which she had paid a 建設業者 just £5.

Souhami is brilliant at 述べるing life on a shoestring. Dagmar raised chickens for eggs and made 着せる／賦与するs out of old 一面に覆う／毛布s. When she 手配中の，お尋ね者 to visit 親族s, she hitched a 解除する from lorry drivers: you could always 信用 them, she said

You couldn’t, unfortunately, 信用 Sidney Sinclair. For a start that wasn’t his real 指名する. He was born Harold Hagger but he used 得点する／非難する／２０s of 偽名，通称s. Not only had he been 刑務所，拘置所d for 窃盗, he was also a bigamist and Army 見捨てる人／脱走兵.

What this story 明らかにする／漏らすs again and again is how 平易な it was, in an age before computers, to reinvent yourself. There were so many 追い出すd people in Britain that losing yourself in a （人が）群がる was 平易な.

Souhami superbly 逮捕（する）s the 粉々にするd mood in this 時代, and shows us ordinary men and women grappling with new 鮮明度／定義s of good and evil.

In a 勇敢に立ち向かう and risky section, Souhami gives us 詳細（に述べる）s of some of the terrible 残虐（行為）s carried out at Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. Does the fact that Nazi guards were ‘only doing their 職業’ ma ke their 殺人s better or worse than Sinclair’s?

殺人 At Wrotham Hall is more than a pacy whodunit. It is a snapshot of a historical moment, a time when there was as much 関心 with moral 審議s as there was worrying about whether there was enough sugar to last the week.

It reads, above all, like an unsettling dream.

Splendour of the Serengeti

How do you 逮捕（する） the 魔法 of the Serengeti, that 広大な home of the Masai tribesmen that stretches across 12,000 square miles of East Africa? Simple: just dot a few cameras around, cover them in mud, leaves or 支店s? and .?.?. wait.

素晴らしい: A flock of birds take to the 空気／公表する in the Serengeti

That’s what photographer Anup Shah did and, using remote 支配（する）／統制するs from his トラックで運ぶ parked far away from the 活動／戦闘, he 逮捕（する）d the 野性生物 that teems across the endless plains. The results are astounding. Hundreds of flamingos 飛行機で行く low over Lake Nakuru 国家の Park, above, while a snarling ヒョウ shows its displeasure at some approaching 粗野な人間s, 権利.

どこかよそで in Serengeti 秘かに調査する (Abrams £25 % £18.99 inc p&p) elephants give the cameras an inquisitive 軽く押す／注意を引く with their trunks before 板材ing away, and lion cubs peer suspiciously into? the レンズs.
You will never get closer to the wild .?.?.