In a recent post I discussed JRR Tolkien’s brilliant 1947 essay on Fairy Stories. One of the many interesting terms he introduces is “eucatastrophe”.
A eucatastrophe is something that happens quite often in fairy stories: It’s a sudden twist at the end, which makes everything turn out all right.
I mentioned this the other day to somebody I know who is from the Commonwealth. She laughed when I explained to her the meaning of the word.
I asked her why she found it so funny. She told me that these days you can parse the same word in an entirely different way.
“Brexit,” she explained, “is an E.U. Catastrophe.”
I can see her point. JRR Tolkien had a prodigious imagination, but even he could not have foreseen Boris Johnson.