Geoffrey Household’s 1939 novel Rogue Male—an old favourite of mine—follows a British sportsman as he returns from an unnamed central European country (read Germany), having failed in his attempt to assassinate the dictator who is that country’s head of state (read Hitler). Pursued by foreign agents, the hunter is literally forced to go to ground in rural Britain like a fox to its earth. The novel (described accurately by the Times of London as “simply the best escape and pursuit story yet written”) has twice been made into a film: in 1941 as Man Hunt, directed by Fritz Lang; and again in 1976 under its original title, starring Peter O’Toole.