Seventh Circle
September 2000, just after my final interview for a prestigious and much coveted job as a film examiner for the British Board of Film Classification, I’m told that there would be a week to wait for news. Frustrating. So I took myself off to the Royal Academy of Art to visit an exhibition of Botticelli’s drawings of Dante’s Divine Comedy – and the attendant circles of hell. I learned that the 7 th circle was reserved for those who waste their talent. What talent was I wasting? Earlier that year, I had read my short story Jordan Meadows at the Hay Festival. OK, so I arranged th...