The place for scene-setting is in the acknowledgements

The place for scene-setting is in the acknowledgements.Mark Crossley, the Nottingham Forest goalkeeper who has a remarkable shoot-out success rate of 75 per cent, did provide assistance, imparting tips about the taker’s run-up and agreeing to face 10 penalties from Anthony. The author scored five but concludes, given that Crossley really tried to save only one of them, that a little practice might have helped.As it might have helped England. In 1990 against Germany, 1996 against Spain and Germany and 1998 against Argentina, the players spent little or no time rehearsing what has become a frequent conclusion to knock-out matches. Anthony is rightly contemptuous, and it comes as no surprise that the Germans are assiduous in preparation.It may also come as no surprise that Kevin Keegan, the present England coach, believed that it was “impossible to recreate match conditions in training”. So when England go out of the tournament on penalties (if, indeed, they reach the knock-out stage), we will all know who to blame..

Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s long tramps across the Lake District are famous; less so are the exploits of their prodigiously talented contemporary Elizabeth Smith (1776-1806). An avid reader from the age of three, she taught herself 12 languages, including Welsh, Erse, Hebrew and African and Oriental dialects. She wrote poetry and a commentary on Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding and produced a fêted translation of the Book of Job. She also loved scrambling up and down “rude mountains, roaring torrents and rocky precipices”. Panting behind her admiringly came Wordsworth’s neighbour Thomas Wilkinson of Yanwith, who gave details of his jaunt with Elizabeth and her two sisters in his gossipy Tours to the British Mountains (1824). Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s long tramps across the Lake District are famous; less so are the exploits of their prodigiously talented contemporary Elizabeth Smith (1776-1806). An avid reader from the age of three, she taught herself 12 languages, including Welsh, Erse, Hebrew and African and Oriental dialects.

She wrote poetry and a commentary on Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding and produced a fêted translation of the Book of Job. She also loved scrambling up and down “rude mountains, roaring torrents and rocky precipices”. Panting behind her admiringly came Wordsworth’s neighbour Thomas Wilkinson of Yanwith, who gave details of his jaunt with Elizabeth and her two sisters in his gossipy Tours to the British Mountains (1824).
This is a long trip, about 25 miles there and back, but if the Smith girls could do it in a day, so can you – though overnighting is easy in the Langdale valley, in either the campsite or the hotels in Dungeon Ghyll. Park in the car park at the head of Coniston Water and imagine you have just rowed there from the Smiths’ house at Townson Ground, having breakfasted at 3am “in Queen Elizabeth style on bread and beef”.Walk along the head of the lake road, “light-heeled and light-hearted as the roes of the mountains”, as far as its junction with the B5285.