Mind your language
MY FRIEND Miss Cristina ()clone, the editrix of the Catholic Herald, referred recently to a Canadian priest as the `Rev. Tomalin'. That hurt. You must add a Christian name or an honorific, such as Mr, Miss, Mrs, Dr or Lord. So: the Rev. Doris Tomalin; the Rev. Mrs Tomalin; the Rev. Lord Tomalin; the Rev. Prof. Lady Tomalin, and so on.
Dear old Cristina didn't mean it, of course. She is an American, culturally. But all the papers do it, and worse. For example, they call the wives of knights `Lady Mary Splodge' instead of 'Lady Splodge'. So they called Lady Graham- Moon 'Lady Sarah Graham-Moon' when she did funny things with her estranged husband's wine-cellar. To be `Lady Sarah' she would have to be the daughter of at least an earl (the superi- or ranks to which are marquesses and dukes; the inferior viscounts and barons). It is all perfectly simple.
Take my friend Lady Lucinda Worsthorne. She is the daughter of Lord Lambton, once called by courtesy `Viscount', being the son of an earl, now, one might think, nothing much, having disclaimed his peerage in 1970 (though he persists in calling himself `Lord Lambton' on the grounds that he was 'allowed by Mr Speaker Lloyd to continue to sit in Parliament using his courtesy title'. A likely story).
Anyway, Lady Lucinda has married various people, including a baronet called Sir Edmund John William Hugh Cameron-Ramsay-Fairfax-Lucy (son of Sir Brian Fulke Cameron-Fairfax-Lucy and of the Hon. Alice Buchan, daughter of Lord Tweedsmuir), thus becoming Lady Lucy Lucy. When she married Sir Peregrine Worsthorne (son of Colonel Koch de Gooreynd [who later assumed the name of Worsthorne], and of Lady Norman, and the brother of Simon Towneley [who assumed his surname in 1955 by royal licence and is now, of course, the Custos Rotulorum of Lan- cashire]) she became Lady Lucy Worsthorne.
I cannot understand why foreigners find British nomenclature confusing.
Dot Wordsworth
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