When news broke, some months ago, that a new TV adaptation of EF Benson's Mapp and Lucia books was to be broadcast this Christmas a mighty dread seized the minds of all Bensonites, me included.
Judgment vanishes, and a hyperactive anxiety seizes the mind".
From now through August, American films will again be almost all male, almost all the time (the occasional decorative gal pal notwithstanding) as this year's boys of summer — the Green Lantern and Captain America, Conan the Barbarian and Conan O'Brien — invade the multiplex, seizing media-entertainment minds and your dollars.
He loved the idea of getting married even less: "A kind of ineffable, sickening disgust seizes my mind when I think of this most despotic, most unrequired fetter".
It seizes the mind, body and soul.
All of these biological responses seize your mind and try to take control of the situation, making it much harder for you to think straight.
It one thing for Bran to leap into a dire wolf's mind, but seizing control of Hodor at need is questionable even in his world of murderers and political cutthroats.
Fear not, I say, for I realise that mighty dread has seized your troubled minds.
It plays on our relation to power, gender politics, and even technology: Videos and audio tracks take away the consumer's autonomy; computers seize control of minds, inspiring slavish devotion and even love..
It makes the case that the West hasn't taken juche seriously enough, or realised how the authorities have been relatively successful in seizing control of their subjects' minds.Much commentary on North Korea stresses the ways in which the regime differs from almost any other on earth, locking its people in a weird alternative reality.
