The schoolboys in Lord of the Flies reverted to primal savagery after a plane crash left them abandoned on an island with no adult supervision.
Some, though perhaps not those who believe in the concept of pure evil, might argue that the Edlington brothers, both excluded from school, were abandoned in a different way.
Theirs was a tough, abusive childhood in a dysfunctional family, two of seven brothers and stepbrothers aged from 8 to 19. Home was on a former council estate in a north Doncaster suburb.
It was a family whose 36-year-old matriarch, approached after her sons’ arrest for attempted murder, yelled through her letter-box: “It’s got nowt to do with me – they weren’t even in my care.”
The pair had been in