Inspired by walks around Bolts Law in County Durham where remnant lead mining flues such as Jeffrey's Chimney draw the eye from miles around. W.H. Auden was inspired by this landscape in many poems including New Year Letter January 1940 in which he mysteriously calls this flue 'the finger of all questions'. The line occurs in the dead centre of this epic 42 page poem about the fate of Europe in the Second World War as viewed from America