World Without End – C4

IT’S a story of bawdiness, brutality, and promiscuity. A sort of 1300s What Happens In Kavos.

Ken Follett’s World Without End is wall to wall grunting. Although admittedly some of it’s ploughing.

Kingsbridge Cathedral is the scene of much groaning. If it’s not illicit couples making love in church confessionals, it’s the wounded from medieval bridge collapses. “The dead in the south transept,” ordered young medical student Caris, “the injured in the north.” Basically it’s Casualty without anaesthetic.

Caris took a pragmatic view on the accident, seeing it as a simple structural fault. Narcissistic monk

Godwyn, though, believed it the Lord’s work. “The punishment,”he opined, “is on Kingsbridge for becoming a haven for witches, whores, and filth.”If he’s right, I’d suggest the structural engineers of Wolverhampton check all bridges immediately.

Caris saw the collapse as proof the town needed a designated hospital. “We can't just leave people strewn across the cathedral floor,” she said. Certainly it’s not what you’d want if you’d got a wedding booked there.

“We need somewhere to put the injured,” she added. I can see the first 14^th century hospital soap coming on.

With building on a new bridge underway, Queen Isabella stormed into town with her chest on show. War chest that is – she’s about the only female character not to flash her other one.

The coffers were empty, and she didn’t want money wasted on vital improvements. Whether Follett’s an advisor to the Coalition I’m unsure.

“Kingsbridge can wither and die for all I care,” she told town tax collector, dishevelled knight Roland, a man who doesn’t so much look like he’s been dragged through a bush as spent the past 15 years living in one,“but I will have my taxes.” They say George Osborne’s got a poster of her on his bedroom wall.

Roland sent Ralph, evil Lord of Wigleigh, to tell the bridge builders to stop, although there was no small amount of anger at the news. “****the Queen,” said one. It’s fair to assume he wasn’t a collector of Jubilee tea towels.

Ralph rewarded this outburst by removing his arm with a sword. It sounds tough but I can’t help feeling it’d work better than the anti-social behaviour order.

Blood-spattered, he returned to Roland to tell him the work had stopped. “Now there's a man who knows how to take an order,” noted Roland. And certainly having him round would speed up productivity in most offices.

Roland’s upbeat mood was stymied, however, when he found his wife had been one of the Kingsbridge groaners – and he wasn’t the cause.

That’s what you get for letting yourself go. What Roland needs is a medieval Gok Wan.