Literature
The Hand and the Lock
Somewhere in the heart of England, on a back street of a medieval town, there is an undistinguished door. It is an old door, the door to a gaol house unused for one hundred and forty years and is held closed by a large and rusted lock
This padlock, fused solid by age and corrosion could have been last snapped shut the day that final prisoner stepped to freedom in 1864. What is clear, when you touch the heavy pitted metal, is that that door has not been opened in your lifetime or mine, nor for many years before, and that no key has turned in that lock in living memory. That hasp and shackle are wedded together more inseparably than a killer a