One of the parts of Dracula that gets glossed over, especially these days, is that the Count brings back a baby in a bag for his brides to feed upon. It may not be stated explicitly ‘baby in a bag’ but it’s pretty clear what’s going on there.

The fascination with vampires (I first read Dracula about twenty years ago in my early teens) has whipped to a frenzy over the past few years, although it is probably dying down again now. This happens in cycles, it seems, but the recent phase has definitely placed the attractiveness of the vampire front row and centre in many a secret literary/TV crush. It seems to me, therefore, that if you want to make someone a little bit sexy, having him bring babies back for his undead mistresses to snack on is probably not the done thing. Just saying. If it is, please don’t tell me. I don’t want to know you.

Anyway, Dracula certainly has some personal appeal in a grossly mesmerising car-crash-can’t-look-away sense, but the book was all about the horror of the man himself. Not the sexiness.

He had hairy palms for goodness sake. And if that gets you off, then I still don’t want to know…