In his weekly Takimag column, Theodore Dalrymple covers his family history during World War II, children using foul language in public, police tactics in Barcelona, and watching Russian tanks blown to smithereens. In other words, classic Dalrymple.

With this in mind, for there were children present in the garden, I sought out the source of this expletive, with a view to getting him to control himself, but of course it turned out to be a child. It is more probable that adults these days have to stop their ears from overhearing obscenities from children than the other way round.