At the weekend we went to see The Last King of Scotland, a film about the reign of Idi Amin in Uganda (hint: hundreds of thousands of people died); a few days earlier we’d been to see Pan’s Labyrinth, a fantasy set to the backdrop of Spain in the early days of Franco‘s rule (hint: Spanish dictator, mass graves).

After the film, which ended with a scene of torture, my wife turned to me and said “That’s it, next week we’re seeing a romantic comedy”; before I could reply a woman walking past with a harrowed expression on her face nodded and replied “I know just what you mean”.