When Robert E. Howard penned stories in the 1930s about his comic book hero Solomon Kane, he would write of nubile lovelies in need of rescue by the ‘vengeful Puritan’ (as Kane was known).

Many feminists have complained that Howard demeaned women, and in his Kane tales that’s probably true (although he also wrote the Conan the Barbarian books, and there’s nothing subservient about Red Sonja). But this is the 21st century, so in the latest film version of the stories, the heroine, as played by 17-year-old Rachel Hurd-Wood, is not so much a damsel in distress as a very feisty young woman who doesn’t think she needs a hero to ‘rescue’ her.