David Simon and Edward Burns

It’s dirty, grubby and doubting. And us at our most real. The lexicographer takes us inside the world of “rough, truthful language” from rhyming slang and cant to the streets of Baltimore and an etymology of the f-word

Inner-city crime is a matter of deprivation not race. It comes from a street culture that respects extreme violence, says Gavin Knight, an author who spent two years among British gangs and the police units covering them