For nearly all my adult life, I’ve lived within walking distance of Primrose Hill. Indeed, for the last two decades, I’ve lived close enough that my regular evening ritual – travel, health, and global plagues permitting – involves a short stroll down Regent’s Park Road, then a stiff walk up the sacred hill itself, to take in the splendid view. Then I march home, fully dopamined, via the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands of Gloucester Avenue and the Regent’s Canal, to my Camden flat.

There is the typical Primrose Hill scene – beautiful young people picnicking with M&S prosecco – and here is a young man about to be knifed to death. It does not make sense

There is the typical Primrose Hill scene – beautiful young people picnicking with M&S prosecco – and here is a young man about to be knifed to death. It does not make sense

I say ‘rugged Primrose Hill borderlands’ because that’s been a modest in-joke with locals and neighbours for as long as I can remember. Yes, I live in that fuzzy bit where fashionable Primrose Hill begins to fade into grittier Camden, but the idea this quintessentially civilised, harmonious and beautiful corner of north London could ever be some kind of war-torn frontier, a land of bandits and reivers, is so patently absurd it is quietly funny.

It is not so funny right now. Not after the brutal stabbing and murder of 21-year-old film student Finbar Sullivan early last Tuesday evening, on the lower slopes of the hill. There are social media videos which purport to show the run up to the murder, but they are as perplexing as they are........

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