Murder - A Dying Art? Orwell, Chandler, and the Mysterious Death of English Crime Writing

In February 1946, the pages of Tribune were enlivened with a brief but witty piece by George Orwell, entitled “The Decline of the English Murder”. It began like this:
It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World. Roast beef and Yorkshire, or roast pork and apple sauce, followed up by suet pudding and driven home, as it were, by a cup of mahogany-brown tea, have put you in just the right mood. Your pipe is drawing sweetly, the sofa cushions are soft underneath you, the fire is well alight [...] In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about?