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Tamar Cohen looks at
some of the most famous weddings in literature
If weddings are high
drama, weddings that don’t happen are the highest drama of all. Like the
bride, emotions are left all dressed up with nowhere to go, and often
eventually self-combust. Pity poor Miss Havisham, so cruelly jilted. Many
women cringe about their choice of wedding dress a year or two later as
fashions change – imagine being condemned to wear it day in, day out for the
rest of your life. It's enough to drive anyone mad. Or what about Jane Eyre,
whose first wedding is dramatically halted at the altar? Maybe she ought to
have guessed that having a crazed woman rip her wedding veil to shreds two
nights before the wedding wasn’t the greatest omen for married life, but the
fact is that Jane is emotionally geared up for this wedding and when it’s
snatched away from her, and her nearly-husband is revealed as a
nearly-bigamist, it leaves her – and us – in emotional freefall.
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Anne Zouroudi
explains the relevance of food in crime fiction
In 1686 Nicholas Cox
published The Gentleman’s Recreation, a book on country pursuits in
which he recommended a method of diverting hounds from a scent by dragging a
dead cat or fox across the trail. In the absence of suitable carrion, said
Cox, a red herring would make a reasonable substitute. Cox’s fish would have
been a type of kipper cured in strong brine and then smoked, a process which
turns the flesh red-brown. Metaphorical red herrings are happily less
pungent, but they’ve always been a vital ingredient in crime fiction. Small
wonder, then, that the genre seems inextricably linked with food. Certainly
I’m guilty of putting food centre-stage in my Greek island mysteries. My
investigator, Hermes Diaktoros, is a gourmet and occasional gourmand, whose
particular weakness is for bougatsa – a flaky pastry filled with vanilla
custard and cinnamon.
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