The mystery of the missing Mrs

I don’t much care for being called Wordsworth. Oh, the name is rather distinguished, though it came from my husband, but I mean that I don’t like to be referred to as ‘Wordsworth’ without the Mrs. It makes me sound like a convicted criminal.

I don’t even like Jane Austen being referred to as ‘Austen’. I know it sounds prissy nowadays to call her ‘Miss Austen’, but we don’t hesitate to refer to Mrs Thrale (though she became Mrs Piozzi) or to Mrs Patrick Campbell, though she married George Cornwallis-West in 1914. (After he was divorced from Winston Churchill’s mother in that year, she reverted to ‘Lady Randolph Churchill’, which must have taken some force of character.)

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Alexander Larman

Beware the middle of Lidl

You’d think it would be easier to know what to call living people, but our conventions are now in chaos. Take the Home Secretary, who has been married to a man called May since 1980.