Matriarchal dystopias: Joe Orton got there before the Two Ronnies | Brief letters

Up Against It and The Worm That Turned | War-readiness v human survival | White liberal response | A northern insult The Two Ronnies weren’t the first to write about a dystopian world run by women when they came up with the sketch series The Worm That Turned ( Is Sacha Baron Cohen and Rosamund Pike’s new gender swap comedy inspired by The Two Ronnies? , 20 April ). This was all covered much earlier by Joe Orton’s screenplay Up Against It, written for the Beatles in 1967, but rejected by them before the playwright’s death later that year.