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.