Dell identifies the image below as “The Antichrist riding Leviathan, a Flemish 16^th-century miniature from a manuscript of Lambert de Saint-Omer’s Liber floridus (c.1448).”

As we poor trapped authors know all too well this picture was, like Nesbit’s, drawn from life. However, contrary to first appearances it does not contain two creatures, but one: the uniquely repulsive character we all know as Warburg.

Observe the rider’s vacant expression and oddly disjointed posture. These are clues to the truth behind Warburg‘s favourite deception: the rider is not a separate entity. Indeed, the rider does not exist. What you see as the rider is in fact nothing more than an unusually developed wart – a huge sort of growth on Warburg’s back, dressed up by Warburg in human clothing.

At the time Warburg posed for this painting the deception was still convincing at first glance. Now, the better part of six hundred years later, I and my fellow authors are in the unfortunate position of being able to report that, frankly, it does not look at all convincing any more.

Warburg’s wart has wilted, drooped and shrunk and spread with age, the flesh melting like candlewax into a shapeless, hairy, camel-hump mass of peculiar repugnance. Yet still Warburg capers and prances in front of us, displaying his grotesque, robed wart and expecting everyone he meets to be taken in and start talking to the wrong end of him.

We poor trapped authors, of course, make a special point of humouring Warburg. We do what he wants: we go along with his pathetic attempts at ventriloquism and the silly squeaky voice he puts on when the wart is supposed to be speaking. We pretend to be utterly fooled.

Why, you ask? Are you kidding? Look at Warburg’s TEETH!

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