JRM misses the point...

In the extras Rhys Meyers says of the burning of the library "The books contain the ritual. If the lord didn't have the books and the ritual, well he wouldn't be the lord."

On the other hand Richardson has it right. Groan's library is his mind, his intellect and his freedom from the ritual — which is in Barquentine's books, not the earl's.

It's interesting that JRM should get it so egregiously wrong. Not that understanding the earl would have been really important to playing his own part. But it's also interesting that the editors of the extras feature should have put Richardson's and Rhys Meyers words back to back so highlighting — mischievously? — the error.

Now speaking of JRM in the making of feature: he says that Tits was sexually abused. I've read the books a number of times over the years and have never had that thought. Physically, perhaps, with the imprisonment as punishment but sexually? Where did JRM get it? Is it a personal interpolation?

It's not that the idea is outlandish, it could have been plausible to our modern sensibilities. But there seems to be no evidence that it was intended by Peake and it's an unlikely theme to even hint at in the 1940s.