What do you write when there’s nothing there? When the well has dried up, and all you see before you is an arid desert, your poor, writer’s brain fried by the sun? Nothing, I suppose. But wait. Is it really possible to run out of things to say? It seems unlikely, given the tidal wave of inconsequential dross that passes through the right-hemisphere every…
Shekhar Kapur’s film Elizabeth, starring the hugely talented Cate Blanchett, opens with the burning of three heretics at the stake. As the woodpile is lit beneath them, a religious dignitary expresses his token wish that they burn in hell forever, a sentiment shared by many in the gloating crowd. Scenes such as this were commonplace in 16th century England and much of Europe, as…
