I’ve never seen Shakespeare like he is in tragically beautiful Hamnet

Hamnet is William Shakespeare as we’ve never really seen him before – a fully-fleshed human being and playing second fiddle to his wife.

It’s one of the most eagerly anticipated titles on the film festival circuit this autumn thanks to the undeniable pedigree provided by lead actors Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao and the best-selling novel at its heart by Maggie O’Farrell, who also co-wrote the screenplay.

Oh yes, and Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes are producers.

I can’t really imagine this team creating anything other than a profoundly moving and rich piece of cinema, powered by the vulnerability of Buckley and Mescal – and that’s exactly what we get, so make sure you bring your tissues.

Hamnet is Shakespeare’s domestic life reimagined, but so true in its raw emotions that it would be all to easy to mistake it fully for historical fact. The bare bones of it are: we do know that he and wife Anne Hathaway (here called Agnes, as some historians argue) married at 18 and 26 respectively, and when they tied the knot she was already pregnant with their first child.

We also know that they had three children together: Susannah, followed by twins Hamnet and Judith, and that Hamnet tragically died aged 11 in 1596. A few years later, his father wrote Hamlet – a name often seen as interchangeable with Hamnet – one of his most acclaimed plays. Hamnet explores the idea that this was Shakespeare’s way of saying goodbye to the son he couldn’t in real life.