Dot Wordsworth

Rachel Reeves, Becky Sharp and the ‘black hole’

[Getty Images] 
issue 28 September 2024

Becky Sharp, you’ll remember, near the beginning of Vanity Fair, throws the school gift of a Johnson’s Dictionary out of the window of the coach. She responds to Amelia Sedley’s horror by saying with a laugh: ‘Do you think Miss Pinkerton will come out and order me back to the black-hole?’

This is not the £22 billion black hole that Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, teases us with.

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