The civil war might be over, but these are difficult and dangerous times.
Edward II has been defeated and imprisoned by his French wife Isabella, then murdered on her orders (there are dark rumours of the insertion of a red hot poker up his arse at some point). Not that life had a lot of value back then, or so it would seem from World Without End (Channel 4, Saturday), which takes up the reins from the last Ken Follett medieval saga adaptation, The Pillars of the Earth.
How am I feeling, Brother Joseph? Yeah, tip-top as it happens, never better. Which also fails, and the patient – bleeding, stumpy and stinking – dies in agony. And when his methods fail, as they invariably do, he resorts to prayer. Brother Joseph basically has three remedies – blood-letting, a dung poultice fresh from the privy, and amputation by meat cleaver – which he prescribes for everything, often in combination. Especially if Brother Joseph was the medic on call. I wouldn't want to be ill in any way in the England of 1327.
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