While up in Lancaster giving a lecture on the history of LSD for the Royal Society of Chemistry, I asked my hosts if I should do anything before leaving town.

“See the Castle on a guided tour – trust us.” True to form, I heeded their advice and changed my train tickets the next day so I could take two hours to explore the innards of one of Britain’s oldest “working” prisons. How old? Some brick foundations supposedly date to the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian (hands down my favourite Emperor). Historians (of course) squabble over whether or not that’s true, but it’s undoubtedly true that the prison cells were used right up until 2011. Seeing the rooms – grim and clammy as anything you can imagine – was chilling as fuck.

And because the building is still used for legal proceedings for the Crown Court, the castle *technically* belongs to King Charles III (… though I’d say it belongs to us, the citizens and tax payers). So we were not permitted to take photographs in most of the chambers. I’m sure we could have surreptitiously snapped pics with our phones, but – as I’m still a Canadian at heart and didn’t feel like being a dick – of course I didn’t.

It gave me great joy to learn that the building had been used extensively by Henry IV – as Shakespeare’s Henry IV Pt AND 2 are among my favourite plays by The Bard. I would get the “Yet herein will I imitate the sun” speech tattooed all over my back (if it wouldn’t make my mother spin in her grave – she despised body inking).

But what moved me the most was the very graphic and very disturbing stories about horrific torture devices from antiquity on display, such as the “Scold’s Bridle” (a metal cage that disobedient wives would have to wear as they were paraded around town on display). And of course the chambers for public executions.

Remember: it was only a few hundred years ago that public executions were basically the Netflix of the day. We’d like to think we’re so much more sophisticated and empathetic now… but give us a few decades of drought, famine, migration and starvation – plus no internet – when climate chaos wipes out electricity supplies. I guarantee that horrific displays of human cruelty – in public, not on the telly – like this could come right back into everyday life.

The world may have changed, but human nature has not.

I always say: If I hadn’t studied zoology, I would have studied history. She who does not know her history is condemned to repeat it my friends…