Drama Documentary:
THE QUIET MAN OF HOVE
* * * At first sight David England seems an old fashioned figure, belonging perhaps to the world of Pooter or Dr. Crippen. In fact, however, his story belongs squarely in the late twentieth century. Not only did England’s crime depend on the impersonal world of computerised banking, but his demoralisation was due to a wholly contemporary phenomenon: electronic anonymity. In the past false identities depended on expensive forged papers and questionable disguises, but nowadays the criminal, the spy, even the lover, are able to manufacture a screen of untraceability simply by filling in forms. The demise of David England is perhaps a warning to us all: bogged down in the detail of the electronic deception - he simply began to dissolve in electronic space. * * * This story has a number of very promising ingredients:
This has the additional advantage of being a is a practical drama-doc idea: a relatively small cast and a straightforward location. The details of the story are also available in records in the public domain. I am in touch with journalists and policemen who worked on the case and I am confident the story will repay further research. The story itself also has an easy-to-tell structure:
Jim Burge 1999
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