The American poet Robert Lowell wrote of “all these settings out/beginning in wisdom, ending in doubt. Joanna becomes the leader of the little band of women, and would have been the obvious choice even if she hadn't gravitated to that role. Later, in 1830 he received a further message, that God wanted his followers to provide Mr Wroe with seven virgins ‘for comfort and succour’. While there is sexual scandal (that's familiar), the drama focuses on more challenging concerns, like the meaning of existence, female self-determination, faith and humanism. Of course, something like this is bound to fall to pieces eventually, so some kind of scandal is expected.

But the Galactica was set to be commissioned at the time of the attack, and is hardly an ideal vessel to harbor humanity's last hope. Because after all, my memory is unreliable, and it is 30 years since Mr Wroe’s Virgins was published. Popular opinion in Ashton turned against Wroe when, in 1831, he was accused of indecent behaviour, but the charges were dismissed. Jane Rogers proceeds from that premise to give four of the virgins a chance to tell how they spent a year in the house of Mr Wroe.The prophet John Wroe is someone who has fascinated me since watching this back in '93 and subsequently reading Jane Rogers' novel of the same name that it was based upon.

Wroe was born, on 19 September 1782, in the village of East Bowling, near Bradford, West Yorkshire to a worsted manufacturer and farmer, and baptised in the town.The narrative of Mr Wroe's Virgins is intricate, but the prose is simple and lucid, packed with the vivid substance of nineteenth-century life and tender with detail: ice shards in the milk, loaves baking in the brick oven, the brimstone oratory of the Prophet's sermons by day and the quick needles pricking muslin in the evening. So, we know something of his belief system and his interpretation of the Bible, but nothing personal. I certainly do not understand why such a (at the time) highly acclaimed miniseries has been allowed to fade away from memory, receiving no release to DVD.

The word had spread even outside members of our church, for there were several unfamiliar faces present. She has already appraised each of us, passing over me without concern, checking, testing, comparing. Down in the houseplace stands my uncle, with his back to the cold cheerless chimney, for they never light a fire on a Saturday. Now I wanted to explore other areas where women might find value and meaning: work, religion, love, the physical world.When Wroe visits Joanna’s bedchamber, the scene has the same dank darkness that was present when Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor visited his prisoner’s jail cell. Loved the way different characters tell different aspects of the story from a different point of view and contradict each other. Pat told me she was getting out of “the women’s ghetto”; she was planning a book about men and war, she was going to beat the boys at their own game.