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Arts feature

The odd couple: Austen and Turner at 250

17 May 2025

9:00 AM

17 May 2025

9:00 AM

History is full of odd couples: famous but unrelated people who happen to have been born in the same year. 1809: Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. 1926: Queen Elizabeth II and Marilyn Monroe. Yet few historical pairings are as unlikely as the novelist Jane Austen and the painter J.M.W. Turner, born within a few months of each other in 1775.

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