An Open Letter to Roland Emmerich:

It's reported that you are planning to make a film on Oxford as Shakespeare. I am wondering if you are planning to present this as real history. If so, I would welcome the opportunity to share with you the evidence which shows that there is simply no consistent scenario of Edward deVere's life which can account for the Shakespeare works. All Oxfordian attempts to make their man fit the case for the Bard must overlook crucial evidence. Whichever version of the Oxfordian fantasy then, for (sadly) that is what it is, becomes the narrative for your film, it will inevitably only serve to expose the fatal flaws in the case for his authorship. There is a simple reason for this, and no mystery: Oxford didn't write the plays, or the sonnets, not so much as a word. Francis Bacon is the true author and genius behind the Shakespeare works. The evidence is abundant and overwhelming: Promus, Northumberland,the gap in the Histories exactly filled by Bacon's Henry VII, letters, documents, signatures, parallels. Note in particular that evidence for Bacon's authorship dates from throughout the years of Shakespeare's career; the Promus notebook for example from 1595-6, so there is no question of Bacon somehow taking over the plays after Oxford's death, as many Oxfordians seem to believe. We would urge you therefore, before presenting the Oxford case to the world as true history, to review the evidence, for example at www.sirbacon.org, for Bacon's authorship. It might be that as a result you end up making an entirely different film than the one you have set out to create.

Bacon is Shakespeare: now that would make a great film. I have this idea for the opening scene: Francis, as a boy, playing in the ancient Roman Theatre on the grounds of Gorhambury where he grew up. This is the very same place where the trial of St Alban, the first Christian martyr on British soil, took place, whose name Bacon was to take when he became Viscount St Alban late in his life. The film opens with the boy playing at being an actor on the ancient stage, and then flashes back and forward in time, forward decades to the stage at the Globe with a production of Twelfth Nightin full swing, back more than a millennia in time to St Alban at his trial and forward to Viscount St Alban after his fall working at the First Folio. Then the credits. Then it opens proper with one of Queen Elizabeth's private visits to Gorhambury with all her entourage, as she goes to visit and take her special interest in Francis, her secret son. One month later young Francis is packed off to Cambridge. Etc Etc. Let's do lunch.