would sooner

Mr Marshall, 48, does not want to know yet if he has Huntington's, saying: "I would sooner not know and not have a fear of what might be ahead if I do have it."

A recent study in New York of young men who were likely to be involved in group violence found that 92 percent would sooner retaliate themselves than go to the police in the wake of a shooting.

Of course if your child has no interest in the football - this author's boy would sooner watch a spider walk around for two hours than a football game - get them all tucked in before kick-off.

“Exactly! Accidentalism, little monk, is the reason accidents happen. I’m sorry you lost the birds, mistook their coincidental passing for a cosmic bond, asked a heretical question, and had stones hucked at your head. But I’m also not sorry, because there’s nothing to be sorry about. I would sooner get mad at a pebble that rolls down a winding mountain trail, right under my yak’s hoof. The pebble could never have stopped itself.”

The atmospheric production is long on mood and mist and dark places; the monastery, which one would sooner call a castle, dominates the landscape like something from an old horror movie.