Songfacts®:

• This song was inspired by one of Mark Knopfer's favorite authors, British novelist Beryl Bainbridge. "Beryl Bainbridge was a marvelous writer, as many people know, but the fact that she was a self-deprecating, working class girl from Liverpool," he said, "and her publisher was a man who didn't have a very high opinion of the novel — all of those things conspired for her never to be given the Booker Prize, although she was nominated five times."
  
  "Beryl never went to university, and I really think the literary establishment back then tended to favour people who came from a different background, and had a different kind of education," Knopfler continued. "There was an 'Oxbridge' prejudice against people like her, which existed only at that time, thankfully it doesn't now."
• The song's sound echoes the early days of Dire Straits. "That was a deliberate thing, going back to a period because it seemed to suit the song," Knopfler said. "I took a sort of 'Sultans Of Swing' approach to it for that reason, because it's something you'd associate with a time. So in your head, there's an appropriateness to the style. You just hope you can bring it off."