All right. I am Urbain Grandier, 1590 - 1634,
The not very well known play written by the famous novelist was “Urbain Grandier”, by Alexandre Dumas (Père). Dumas also mentioned the case in his “Crimes Célèbres”, having possibly come across it while researching Cardinal Richelieu in the course of writing “The Three Musketeers”.
The book written by the famous novelist was “The Devils of Loudun”, by Aldous Huxley.
The play adapted from this book was “The Devils” (my apologies, it would seem the play and the film both bear the abbreviated title.), by John Whiting.
The film is “The Devils”, directed by Ken Russell and starring Oliver Reed in the role of Urbain Grandier. The film was hugely controversial because of the scenes involving sexuality, violence and sacrilege, earning it ‘X’ ratings in the UK and the US, even after two of the most shocking scenes were cut. The film is also noteworthy for its soundtrack, composed by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and performed by the ‘Fires of London’.
The opera is “Die Teufel von Loudun” by Krzysztof Penderecki.
“Urbain” is the French form of “Urban”, which is why I said you were close when Pope Urban and Saint Urban came up. I thought Elendil’s Heir had me for certain when he asked about famous writer/sequel by another famous writer - that was close enough to Dumas/Huxley to have me sweating.
So, now, my friends - I submit myself to your judgement. I had decided on ‘U’ as a letter because we hadn’t used it. (There are still a few unused 'U’s out there that surprise me; perhaps they were discarded as being too obvious.) After mentally scanning through all the 'U’s I could think of, I chose Urbain Grandier.
Based on all the above, it was in good faith that I felt I had chosen someone challenging but fair. Between the Huxley novel, which I read somewhere in the mid 1970s, the Ken Russell film which I saw several times in the 1980s and the Penderecki opera (Okay, being an opera singer and a Penderecki fan, that one is likely just me.), I didn’t feel that he was unjustifiably obscure. His case also comes up in the context of historical witchcraft trials, having happened about ~50 years ahead of the Salem witchcraft trials. The fact that there is a contract signed by the Devil and several demons used in ‘evidence’ makes him come up in legal circles from time to time, I am told.
All that being said, if he is someone you have truly never heard of and feel you had no reason ever to have heard of him, I will find some way to randomly select one of you as the next chooser, and I humbly apologize. You are right - the game is much more fun when the answer revealed makes you say ‘Gah! I should have thought of that!’.
)