The Great British Bobby

Book excerpt: The Victorians called him "Bobby" after Sir Robert Peel, the Home Secretary who created the Metropolitan Police in 1829. The generations that followed came to regard the force in which he served as "the best police in the world." If 21st- century observers sometimes take a more jaundiced view of his efforts, the blue-helmeted, unarmed policeman remains an icon of Britishness, and a symbol of the relatively peaceful nature of our social evolution. In "The Great British Bobby," Clive Emsley traces the development of Britain's forces of law and order from the earliest watchmen and constables of the pre-modern period to the police service of today.