It is an act of vandalism that Poor Things, the Scottish polymath Alasdair Gray’s astonishing 1992 novel, even shares a title with Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos’s atrocious reimagining of a book he didn’t understand. Gray decorated his works with Blakean visionary illustrations, and his 1980s masterpiece Lanark is as close to life-changing as novels get.

Alas, he made the hideous mistake of dying in 2019 at the age of 85, leaving himself at the mercy of the barbarians who survived him. Poor Things, the film, contains a chilling, if unintentional, message for the creative giants of this or any other time, and for everyone else, too: Whatever you do, never, ever die.