The Hampshire Chronicle has been called a number of things over the last 251 years. But haughty? It's probably a first.
Ann Treneman, esteemed columnist with The Times, picked up on this newspaper's leader comment last week.
We had raised questions about the statue of Jane Austen that Winchester Cathedral proposes to install in The Close, to highlight its links with the Chawton-based novelist. She was buried in the cathedral in 1817 after spending her last days in a house in nearby College Street.
READ MORE HERE: Chronicle comment on proposed statue of Jane Austen in Cathedral Close
The Chronicle highlighted the statue's windswept look, pointing out it would have been unlikely if Ms Austen was getting to her feet to receive guests at her home in Chawton. Unless the house was particularly draughty.
Ms Treneman says our "sniffy" views have "a touch of hauntiness (haughtiness, surely? Chronicle ed.) that seems very Lady Catherine de Bourgh".
Lady Catherine is the snooty character in Austen's most famous work, Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813.
Perhaps it should be a truth universally acknowledged that The Times can't get over the fact the Hampshire Chronicle was founded in 1772, some 13 years before The Times?
They may be Johnny-come-latelys but hats off to the sub-editor who came up with the headline 'Austen waits for her plinth charming'.
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