The issues around mental illness – both Macbeth’s and Lady Macbeth’s – go remarkably unacknowledged. The story was in many ways familiar - being evocative of Bronte and Hardy - with its portrayal of Victorian country gentry and the brutality and sense of entitlement that sometimes occurred between the classes but the way the story unfolded frequently surprised me by not following through in the way one might have expected it to. As you explore Macbeth’s language, you’ll find even more evidence to back up your case and find more arguments for why he does what he does. There are three impediments to Katherine continuing to enjoy her status and relationship, and each one requires another step into moral turpitude. I enjoy retellings as much as the next person but when there’s some historical relevance to the plot and characters, well, I’m on board even more.

It is Boris who rules the roost and gloweringly insists on Katherine being a demure and submissive wife. She proves herself a defiant, empowered nonconformist, and an explicit threat to a patriarchal system of governance in that, through challenging his masculinity, she manipulates Macbeth into murdering King Duncan. It is smart, sexy, dour: qualities that are weaponised by a lethally charismatic lead performance from Florence Pugh as the eponymous, unrepentant killer.

Lady Macbeth seems to go from being someone with no conscience at all to someone who is overwhelmed by feelings of guilt. I actually did not know that Lord and Lady MacBeth were real people, and that made this novel all the more entertaining. Cunning and ambitious, she is one of the protagonists of the play, encouraging and helping Macbeth carry out his bloody quest to become king. At the start of the novel we are told Gruoch's grandmother was the daughter of druids who remembers the kingdom of the Picts.

Guy Lodge of Variety said "Florence Pugh announces herself as a major talent to watch in William Oldroyd's impressively tough-minded Victorian tragedy. Some of the predictions come true, so Macbeth is taken in even more by the Witches, and this leads to his eventual destruction.Her latest self-penned short film, I Am a Unicorn, is currently playing at festivals in the UK, US, and Europe. So much of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth is caught up in her husband that I was shocked, thrilled even, to learn that Gruoch had lived this completely different life before MacBeth. She has a BA in journalism, and her screenplay Queen Hereafter was longlisted for the Thousand Films Screenwriting Competition in 2019 and adapted into her debut novel. William Oldroyd’s fierce feature debut feels like Victorian noir, a twist on a genre probably invented by Shakespeare in the first place. Banquo sees the witches as linked with the devil and ‘darkness’ and therefore suspects their evil intent.