Cunning Old Fox: Bradbury, Dalziel & Pascoe and the Absurdity of The Hunt
By Will Barber Taylor
Fox hunting is one of the most distasteful topics that every so often rears its ugly head in the British body politic. It is a symbol of entrenched privilege and a vulgar display of assumed superiority and a wilful acceptance of violence against animals. Its adherents are often people who rely on the dubious assertion that it is beloved in the countryside (it is not) and that it is traditional. Perhaps the worst way to justify why something should be continued is that other people once did it; can that really be a reason for celebrating the ritualistic murder of an animal for nothing more than the pleasure a group of inadequate people derive from it?.
It is also a part of the British literary landscape. For Wilde, it was best summed up as the “the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable”. Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man in contrast celebrated fox hunting as representation of the ways in which a young man could prove himself — it also represented what Sassoon considered to be the glow of pre-war England. Similarly, Doctor Salter in John Mortimer’s Paradise Postponed wishes for a “clean death” on the “hunting field” whilst out fox hunting — instead the fall from his horse that Salter hopes will kill him merely causes him to break his neck, forcing him into a wheelchair. Since the 2004 Hunting Act was passed, fox hunting has been banned in the UK although this hasn’t stopped foxes still being killed in trail hunting incidents, nor has it stopped those who support it from attempting to revive the practice.
Fortunately, these have all been unsuccessful, but the idea of fox hunting and its representation of the class divide in Britain has not died out. It is still used as an easy means of distinguishing between someone who is left wing from right wing, rich from poor. It is also still a topic that fascinates, and perhaps always will intrigue, authors. One of the best uses of fox hunting as a literary device came in the 2000 episode of the TV detective series Dalziel and Pascoe, Cunning Old Fox. Dalziel and Pascoe was created by Reginald Hill in 1970, first appearing in the novel A Clubbable Woman, and have since gone on to appear in 25 novels, many of which were adapted for television. Across the 11 series, starring Warren Clarke as Superintendent Andy Dalziel and Colin Buchanan as Detective Sergeant, later Detective Inspector Peter Pascoe, the series dealt with a variety of topics and themes. Cunning Old Fox was part of the show’s fifth series and was written by Malcolm Bradbury and Steven Attridge. It would be one of Bradbury’s last contributions to television after a stunning career that included adaptations of Blott on the Landscape, Porterhouse Blue, Cold Comfort Farm, Amis’ The Green Man, The Wench is Dead for Morse, his original series The Gravy Train and several scripts for Dalziel and Pascoe.
The episode is, of course, framed by the mystery of deaths involving a particular hunt when one of their number, Georgina Webster, dies in mysterious circumstances. One of the central reoccurring themes of Dalziel and Pascoe is the distinct difference between the two central characters — Dalziel, a common-sense Yorkshireman derides his university educated colleague Pascoe for his pretensions. Bradbury flips this on its head and inverts our expectations by having Dalziel, the cop who has lived in the countryside longer than Pascoe a staunch opponent of hunting whilst Pascoe although not an advocate can at least see why its practised. This allows for an interesting development of the somewhat antagonistic relationship between the two that is at the core of the series’ success.
Whilst the story has at its heart the question of who is killing the different members of the hunt, it is thematically driven by the absurdity of hunting and in particularly Bradbury and Attridge take aim at hunt followers; individuals who are not part of the hunt but are instead effectively fans of it who follow along and watch the hunt’s progress. The episode displays the way that hunt followers are treated by those actually involved in the hunt itself and there is a clear class distinction between Birdyce, one particular hunt follower necessary to the plot who is a Uriah Heap like figure without any latent ambition, and the Master of the Hound, James Marsham who views Birdyce as nothing but an annoyance. Marsham’s own complicated relationship with his estranged daughter who is one of the hunt saboteurs is another example of the theme of the destructive nature of the hunt — it does not only cause the death of individual foxes but it has a destructive, corrosive effect on those that partake in it, rubbing away their humanity and leaving them with nothing but a sense of superiority and a lack of understanding for their fellow creatures.
Bradbury and Attridge are making a deeper point of how an acceptance of one form of cruelty can lead to others — the motivation behind the killer of the members of the hunt is not simply revenge but also a lack of respect from the hunt itself, particularly towards those who follow it, its inability to care about anything other than the satisfaction of an innate blood lust and a feeling of self-satisfaction. The episode is thus as much a critique on the practise of hunting as it is on the class system that is associated with it. The investigation is brought about by Marsham’s receipt of an anonymous letter claiming that Webster’s death was murder — Marsham’s pressure on the Assistant Chief Constable to provide assistance leads Dalziel and Pascoe to investigate the case, with Dalziel throughout making clear his distaste both for Marsham and for fox hunting. Dalziel’s suggestion to the lead saboteur Midge that fox hunting is part of a system “to keep lads like us down” might be somewhat tongue in cheek — Dalziel is as prejudiced against the activists in some ways as he is against the hunt — but there is perhaps some truth to his remark. Fox hunting and the act of hunting itself has often been seen as a symbol of the class structure; it is representative throughout history of the distinction between the class that can ride and kill at will on their own land and those that can’t because they don’t have any land. Its encouragement of feelings of tradition and feigning, but rather merely grudgingly accepting, of respect for the followers of the hunt is Bradbury and Attridge’s critique of the staples that keep the class system in place. Birdyce’s following of the hunt is tolerated but he is always kept in his place, a cultural eunuch allowed to watch the fox hunting and embracing its traditions without ever becoming involved in it, is symbolic of the same view of the class system that Marsham clearly has generally.
Cunning Old Fox is a great detective story but it is more than that — it is a searing indictment of a practise that attempts to find justification for itself whilst failing to provide any real reason for it to exist other than the nauseatingly inadequate argument of tradition. Fox hunting is certainly part of a tradition — a brutish and disturbing part of our history that is thankfully one truly in the past.
