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The halves hang on clothes hangers in serried ranks, like clothes at a dry cleaners.

“The old Barnes & Noble was serried ranks of bookshelves, most sections arranged A to Z by author,” Daunt says.

At an exhibition of science fiction art, Nicholls observes “serried ranks of fantasy pictures, nearly unbelievably imaginative in exactly the same kitschy way as each other.”

There are serried ranks of wives and lovers and misfits and buttinskies and assorted hangers-on.

Across town, the faces of dead soldiers stare out in serried ranks from the walls of St Michael's Cathedral in a memorial that stretches for almost 100m.