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REGINALD HILL
AN ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING
A Dalziel and Pascoe novel
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
Copyright © Reginald Hill 1971
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN 9780586072592
Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN 9780007373987
Version 2015-06-18
For Malcom & Anne
Mike & Jo
Jim & Kathy
Contents
… to have the true testimonies of learning to be better heard, without the interruption of tacit objections, I think good to deliver it from the discredits and disgraces it hath received, all from ignorance; but ignorance severally disguised; appearing sometimes in the zeal and jealousy of divines; sometimes in the severity and arrogance of politiques; and sometimes in the errors and imperfections of learned men themselves.
SIR FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
SIR FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
There had been a great deal of snow that December, followed by hard frost. A few days before Christmas a thaw set in, temperatures rose steeply, the snow became slush. The sun greedily sucked up the moisture till it saturated the air and impinged on all the senses.
Fog.
You could smell it in the great industrial towns, its edge of carbon and sulphur biting into the windpipe.
You could see it clearly wherever you looked. But it was all you could see.
You could taste it if you walked out in it without a scarf or kerchief wrapped round your mouth.
You could feel it, damp and greasy, on your skin.