Play With Words

Stephen Bates wrote in The Guardian:

The courtship is being conducted with all the formality of a Jane Austen novel. Effie is being introduced to the others one at a time and for strictly limited hour-long meetings each day to avoid unpleasantness on either side. Informally, the keepers call it speed-mating.

What is this all about? Obviously there is certain ‘Kate Moss of gorillas’ who is about to be introduced into the ‘Gorillas Kingdom’ in London Zoo.

How the Kate Moss of gorillas gave Ziggy the hump at London Zoo’s new enclosure

Kathryn Hughes explains Jane Austen’s philosophy is more about pragmatism than romance.

Everyone in Austen’s world comes with a price tag that announces, in terms as clear as a livestock auction, just how much money is on offer and how much is expected in return. Thus a stonking great income of £5,000 a year is quite enough to wipe out body odour and the fact that no one in three counties can stand your screechy laugh. But with only a paltry £100 a year, you’d better have the kind of cleavage Andrew Davies dreams about.

Never mind the cleavage

Andrew Davies: writer of Sense and Sensibility (2007 TV series), Bridget Jones 2, Bridget Jones’s Diary