They could be after a friend in the new royal family, though. Send a couple of assassins in to kill Cersei and what have you achieved? Just more impenetrable chaos as the Westeros aristocracy finds new ways to eat itself. Put an assassin near the throne on a permanent basis, though…

The Iron Bank, probably. The Lannisters owe them vast amounts of money they're clearly not going to repay, and we've already been told that the Faceless Men were in Braavos first, so there's probably a connection.

Dorne…that's that…courtyard type place where all the confusing stuff that didn't seem to lead anywhere happened, wasn't it?

The play bit was wierdly meta, in a way I'm surprised that nobody mentioned. Fat man taking forever to finish up on stage while someone shouts about 'The Winds of Winter' behind him? Richard E Grant in a small part in which he says that quote about there being no small parts? Pretend-Tyrion sporting a massive fake…

Seconded! I'd somehow totally forgotten about them, despite having them on heavy rotation in my youth…

You are a random internet person and I am literally, honestly excited for you. May your world be rocked.

So it's quite possible that I became aware of John Saxon via a back to back TV showing of two failed post- Star Trek Gene Roddenberry pilots. There was one where there was a nuclear war and he had to fight mutants and one where he…went into suspended animation and woke up in a drug-fuelled matriarchy?

Is Confusion not, basically Kriegspiel?

No idea who these people are, but I just listened to the songs out of idle curiosity and I'm kind of amazed to discover that the old C86/Sarah Records sound persists in the form of people who look like they weren't even born when it was happening. Did that stuff even make it across the Atlantic or is it a weird…

That's basically what happens in the sequels.

I see the argument - I suppose I'm mainly distracted by how bad he is generally ('lesser actor' is a wild understatement - he delivers every line like he's only just read it).

Oh, come on, I still enjoy the book enough to revisit it occasionally. I'm not sure how reading it in a gender/queer context diminishes the imagination behind it - just another way to look at the thing. It's equally interesting for what it has to say about the geopolitics, economics and environmental concerns of its…

I'm not sure I buy that. The general tenor of the book is kind of… well, it's a big point that Paul is a man (he goes to the 'place the women cannot go'), and his triumph is to get beyond the control of the Bene Gesserit. Reading it as an adult I can't ignore the unsettling subtext, which may or may not be conscious…

I had a sticker collection! What was anyone thinking?

'God Emperor…' was pretty good, I thought - at least tried to wave in the direction of the downsides of having even a relatively benign omnipotent psychic dictator who knows the future of everything in charge.

I didn't love the awkward homophobia (he's gay bad! The worst kind of bad!).

For what it's worth, I'd argue that book first, film later is the way to go. The film doesn't work at all as a film, but as a flawed effort at a nearly impossible task of visual translation it's deeply impressive: Lynch nails the warped mediaeval vibe of the milieu (how much of Warhammer 40,000 would look like it does…

He still remains the least miscast version of Gurney Halleck, though. The cockney gangster they went for in the mini-series is baffling beyond measure.

Unless someone knows something we don't, I'm pretty sure a film about the world of a pre-Smiths Morrissey is largely consisting of thrilling action scenes where he reads Alan Sillitoe novels and thinks approvingly about Alma Cogan in a suburban bedroom.

Do you dispute it? Seriously, I was once pretty FitzSimmonsy, but once you see it you can’t unsee it – and it’s only got worse as they’ve put Simmons through the wringer and strengthened her character further.