Back to the Overlook, my God, when did I last read this? I was a teenager, for sure, one of my first King books, but not THE first. I remember the trailers for the film terrifying me when I was little, and it was rewatching the film that prompted me to impulsively order this from the library. King can write, of that there is no doubt, college-professor literary wunderkind level writing, but utterly devoted to the genre of horror, the good old haunted house/psychic child tropes reworked with stunning skill and craft, albeit still raw, to some extent. But the burning molten core of The Shining is the alcoholic father and the destruction of a fragile family. There are a lot of well-described things in here, a lot of well-evoked emotions, but none as real as the ravages of alcoholism on the psyche of the male father and breadwinner and wannabe writer.

Still, though, winter closes in and the hotel comes to ghastly life and the hedge-animals move - yes, well done leaving those out of the film, Stanley Kubrick - and nobody does the unremitting terror of the supernatural like King does. A bracing reminder why he has ruled the bestseller lists for decades.