Titter ye not

To laugh at double meanings has been popular entertainment since Shakespeare. No low pun is too far-fetched to exclude a titter. The trouble comes when laughter is at, rather than with, a drama. “I can’t believe not a single British person was around to snigger at this during production,” a British screenwriter said of the title of the new Robert Redford and Jane Fonda film.

Our Souls at Night is fine by Americans and for British audiences with cut-glass enunciation. For the rest of the Fourth Form, Our Souls sounds like some failed joke. It could have been changed, just as, in 1944, Fanny by Gaslight was renamed Man

of Evil in the US, even though the girl’s name signified a far less taboo anatomical region in demotic American than in British slang. But it looks as if Our Souls is awkwardly here to stay.