Jane Austen and Clive James

Not typically two names that would come together other than to say Clive James writes nothing like Jane austen. However, when the allegedly only existing painting allegedly of Jane Austen was allegedly put up for sale at Christies yesterday, then allegedly it seems no-one was very interested in buying it (BBC).

Maybe that's because no-one's quite 100% sure of it's provenance. The debate continues, but the fact is it was up for sale in the US because no-one wanted to commit to the purchase in the UK when it was up for sale here. It seems US buyers weren't convinced either.

But Allegedly Clive James came into the debate (reported on NPR) saying that the girl depicted was too 'hot' to be Jane Austen, otherwise her books would have been entirely different. Now I don't want to judge the alleged validity of the painting, but I do object to someone judging a book by it's cover, or in this case a book by the picture of it's author. We recently had the issue of a publisher changing the cover (BBC again ) of a new Jane Austen biography because the one planned for use on the cover wasn't pretty enough [to sell enough books I take it], but Clive James' comment sounds to me just a little bit dumb. I suggest that the picture on the right below simply can't be Clive James because someone looking like that surely couldn't communicate so well or write books as witty as the real Clive James. Touché.