The Other Bennet Sister with author Janice Hadlow

2026 is the year of the horse. It is also the year of classic literature thanks to the current crop of high-profile screen adaptations and when it comes to the classics, SLOB is all about the small screen. Most film directors have enormous egos, all too often they use a classic as a departure point to frankly just show off, to try and show they are as brilliant as the author. And we don't like it Sophie or very badly. Our hearts lie with the small screen. There the classics can unfold faithfully and with all the time they deserve. Think of the BBC's adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, Middles March and Jane Eyre, as well as modern small screen classics like Wolf Hall and Normal People. It's fair to say that the breakout hit of the hour is the BBC's adaptation of Janice Hadlow's The Other Bennett's Hista, a bold rewrite of Pride and Prejudice, starring Ella Brachael Erie, Richard E. Grant and Ruth Jones. So we are delighted to have Janice on the show this week to talk about not only adapting Pride and Prejudice, but also having her book in turn adapted for the screen. Not to mention what the feeling is like to be writing a book that is both about classic literature and horses in 2026. Anyone familiar with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice will know the Elizabeth Bennett as a very unappealing young assistant called Mary, who, with Austen's characteristic talent for cruelty and minor characters, is portrayed as a plain looking prig, unable to say the right thing and generally lowering everyone's spirits with her moralizing comments and subpar musical performances. But in The Other Bennett's Hista, Janice Hadlow tells Mary's story and she turns Pride and Prejudice on its head by making Mary by far the most sympathetic character. Mary, we discover, has been belittled for plain looks from a young age, lacking confidence she's struggled to fit in and whenever she's tried to shine has misjudged the mood, not least in her flotation with a common tradesman, the optician John Sparrow, much to her mother's despair. The first half of the book tracks alongside the events recounted in Pride and Prejudice, but once Lizzie and Darcy are married, we're in uncharted territory, Mary goes to stay with her aunt and uncle Gardner in London, and away from the family and the awful Mrs. Bennett, she starts to flower. She discovers the joys of the capital, the poetry of Wordsworth, and meets a better crop of men than Bingley and Darcy. It's a ton of fun, beautifully done and very sophisticated. This is a secret life of books. I am John T. Claypole, poetry loving lawyer, more interested in the beauty of a woman's soul than the fact that she wears glasses. Oh, that's good news for me, John T. And I'm Sophie G, Plain, Bookish, unsure of myself, but shaking off the toxic influence of my family to scale the slopes of scaffold pike and take what I want. This episode, The Other Bennett Sister, by Janice Hadlow. Janice, we loved the Other Bennett Sister. It's just a beautiful novel about the underdog. You champion the underdog, you take the underdogs for Austin's world and you push them right up there. But the other thing is just the sheer bullsiness of going about rewriting the greatest novel ever written and writing into that world and writing in the language of that world. And so our first question is, how did you go about that? Why? Well, first of all, I certainly don't have the bulls enough to rewrite pride and prejudice. I wouldn't say I've done that. I think what I've done or what I thought I was doing, what I was trying to do, was more to write a response, if you like, to the pleasure that the book had given me. And I mean, I've been reading Pride and Prejudice for about, well, since I was about 16 a long time, here's my, oh, penguin copy. Oh, got me so familiar side that, but had it for a long time. And I must have read it 20 times, I guess. I don't know how many times. And after a while, I think with any, any piece of great art, you start to notice things that perhaps you don't notice at the beginning, you know, you start to see things that you just haven't really, haven't really struck you before. And I think that's especially true with, with Pride and Prejudice because Lizzie and Doha's love affair is so all consuming, you know, they're such magnificent characters. And it's, it's amazing to me that even though I've read it so many times, I'm still, my heart is racing towards the end, you know, are they going to get together or not? It's also all in thrawling that sometimes you, it takes a while before you notice, as it were, the furniture up against the wall, you know, you don't notice it immediately. And it was a while before I had begun to notice, notice Mary in any way other than Jane Austen, I think, wants us to do. I mean, Austen really presents Mary to us as essentially comic character, you know, we're supposed to find her ridiculous, everything she says is awkward. She never says the right thing at the right time. She has no, she has no ability to feel the room as it were. She's obsessed with things that no one else is interested in. I mean, the list goes on. And the family make it quite clear that they think she's a bore. And we're supposed to see her, I think, very much from the family's perspective, because, honestly, yes, there are times when she's a bore and she doesn't know judge well, what she's saying and how to say it. But two things, I think there's the moment, the famous, the perhaps one thing anyone who's read the book knows about Mary is the awful moment when she's when Mr. Bennett at Lizzie's behest at a concert where the family are doing very badly in front of Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth suggests to her father that as Mary's singing is so terrible, this is the time to put the stop to it. And Mr. Bennett goes either and removes Mary from this semi-public performance and perhaps the most famous words about Mary, you have delighted it is long enough. And at first, you can't, you sort of share Lizzie's embarrassment, because your perspective is with her. But the more you think about it, the more you think, oh my God, how awful. I mean, Mary at that point is what 16 or 17. This is the only thing in which she thinks she excels. She has no other real things that anyone's interested in, certainly not in public terms. And she's been utterly humiliated by this experience and nobody seems to care whatsoever. And that was the first point where I realised Austin has no sympathy for Mary at all and asked myself what would it look like if you did have sympathy for her. But of course, because Austin is such a great artist, she knows really deep down what Mary is what she is. And she tells us, she makes it really clear that as the only plain sister amongst a group of beauties, she knows she can't compete with Lizzie in terms of which, with Jane beauty, with the younger sisters in terms of reality and energy, she's got nothing to offer. So gradually, gradually, she chooses a sphere in which no one else wants to succeed. She turns herself into this aesthetic, dry, boring scholar. And she sort of alms herself with that. She's becoming away, the creature, her family had made her. She's turned into this character. And what's required, I think, at that point is a bit of Austin sympathy. Because when Austin does have a sympathy with her characters, indeed with every single other Austin hero in that I can think of, every single one of them, we always think of Austin as a love story. And indeed, that's true. One of the great pleasures of it is, it is a love story. And the great pleasure of seeing the right people come together is in jewers and is part of her appeal, I think. But while in the other hand, I think it's also every Austin hero in goes on a journey of self-knowledge. The whole story is, like, no, no Austin hero in is at the end of the novel, the woman she was at the start. She has to learn to be someone else. Because only once she's done that, can she recognise the true man for her. They all do it. We see Lizzy and Darcy do it in tried and treasured this. Lizzy starts off by thinking, Mr Wickham's quite interesting. We see it happen in Emma. We see it happen with Anne Elliott in persuasion. Every one of them becomes someone else, sometimes in a huge way, sometimes in a small way. But these novels are as much about that journey of self-knowledge. Interestingly enough, the men do too. That's what I love about it. Mr Darcy isn't the same man as he is at the beginning. Neither is Captain Wentworth's, nor is Mr Knightley. All these characters have to change. The ones that don't change, though, bear the ones to whom Austin is actually merciless. So, you know, in the end, what happens to think of Maria in, maybe her in Mansfield Park or any of her, or certainly Mary herself, is condemned to a kind of handful of dust hell, you know, left in Longborn, the only daughter at home, no prospect of marriage. So, listen to her parents who don't like her at all anyway, bequering until who knows what. One of them is removed from this world. So, that's a pretty hellish end for her. And I had just wondered what if Austin had been a bit more sympathetic and had allowed, or she'd written a different book. What if Mary had gone on that journey of self-realisation and self-knowledge that we see all her other heroines go on with that look like for her? And who would she be when she came out the other end? Who would she be given her situation? And I was very keen that she shouldn't have some magical transformation and suddenly discovered she's as witty as Lizzie was beautiful as Jane. She has to be herself at the end, but who is she when she's not this rather cow'd and frightened and awkward creature that her family I think have turned her into. So that was for me, the prompt, and that is what my book really, I think, tries to chronicle. Well, first of all, love the fact you referred to hand full of dust in passing. I presume you're talking about the ending where the hero has to listen to Charles Dickens, has to need Charles Dickens for all eternity. Great, Chad, I'm sorry. And also, Janice just to say, such a beautiful intervention in the novel and that observation about how for heroes and the heroines all change and that the ones who don't, I just mind a character's, but that you can give them that transformation. And you, you, you owned Mary just from the, from, the first moment she appears in the novel, I was totally persuaded that there were these steps to her character that went beyond the, you've delighted us long enough moment. You did so beautifully. And I'd love to hear a bit of that journey of something early in the book, Janice, because I think those opening chapters where you take us right inside Mary's mind and her experience of childhood, her experience of being this unloved sister in the household is so powerful. Mary could not remember exactly when she discovered she was playing. She didn't think she knew it when as a very little girl, she'd paid happily with Jane and Elizabeth running around the garden with grass stains on her dress. Or when they'd huddle together before the nursery fire, warming their feet on the fender. She didn't think she'd known it when Mrs. Hill, her mother's house keep her washed her face every morning and tied a clean pinnacle over her dress. She'd certainly not known it when she and her older sister had run into the kitchen on baking days, begging for a crust of warm bread, which they would carry away and eat together behind the shrubbery laughing as if they would never stop. Then she thought she'd been happy, but by the time she was seven or eight years old, she'd begun to suspect something was not quite right. She saw that her mother often looked at her with an expression she did not direct at Jane or Lizzie. It was something between irritation and puzzlement, Mary was not quite sure which, but she came to recognise it very well. As summons always followed, come here, child, and let me look at you. Mary would get down from her chair, walk across the drawing room to where Mrs. Bennett sat, uneasy, under her mother's scrutiny. Her hair ribbons would be tweaked, her satry tied, her dress pulled this way and that. But whatever it was that bothered Mrs. Bennett, none of her attempts to correct it, ever satisfied. She perched her lips and looked away, frustrated, speechlessly waving her daughter back to her place. Mary knew she had disappointed her mother, even if she did not let know in what way she had fallen short. You realise all those times you've read Pride and Prejudice, the sort of the itch you could never scratch, the quam you could never swage, was Mary being left in the corner with no one giving her a second chance. And the moment you give her a second chance, as the reader, you're just, oh, in fact goodness, someone's taking this character seriously. So, Janice, will you tell us about how you took these really tiny threads and traces of Mary in Pride and Prejudice, the famous scene that you just referred to, at various other moments, and wove them into this very full story. How did you stay true to what Austin had given us and at the same time transform the character? Well, I think my starting point was what I mentioned before that, you know, because Austin is such a great artist, she tells us really how Mary has become, why Mary has become who she is. So, she gave me that, she gave me that as a starting point, you know, what do you do when you discover that you're the odd one out in a family of beauties and clever witty people who engage with the world so joyfully, excitingly and confidently. And that was my starting point. And obviously, Austin also tells us, and again, it's sort of quite clear about it, that she turns to this accomplishments as a form of almost like she's building an armor around herself. Her scholarship is like a wall that she erects because it's the only thing she thinks she can do. There's no competition here. Nobody else in the house is longing to read Catherine McCauley or is particularly interested in reading sermons. And it's the one method she has of distinguishing herself. And I think, for me, the first stage was thinking, how would that present itself? You know, what does a bookish young woman of that period? What might she read? What kind of books would she be interested in? How would she show? How would she attempt to show her her uniqueness? And that led me to some of the more popular books that might have even been in this subendit's library. You know, these were the kind of things that Mary might have read. And then as the book went on, I tried to think what would the limitations of that would be, you know, at what point would she, at some point, clearly, who is the only other person who spends all their time in the library and never comes out. And that's her father. And that led me to explore a bit. Why there's no connection between them either? You know, why can't Mr. Bennett see that actually here is a daughter who would delight, love nothing more than to be brought under his wing and educated and turned into the kind of daughter that he's so impatient with Kitty and Lydia, who he thinks sort of quite expresses quite freely. Yes, do you think so? Yes, and silly and foolish. And I think Mary must have had some hopes that perhaps he would finally see that she was trying to be different. And that doesn't work. These are serious disappointments. And then of course, there's a point when, I don't know, the agony of going out into society and even when it's just no more than the marathon ball going along there with the terror that, you know, you already know that you've been in, we've been so many times wandered through the village with your sisters and any, any eligible man talks to them, but they don't even notice you. The buildup, it's kind of thing I began to see how how that how that might work. But I suppose having established that, there was the thought of, and how was she break out of it. And I think in a way, I too, there was two stages for me for that. Her full step with John Sparrow when she so delighted that somebody finds her interesting, that she doesn't read, she doesn't understand the rules of engagement as it were and Charlotte shoots her down. And Mrs. Bennett puts her right. And I loved the way you made Charlotte Lucas a bit of a, a bit of a bitch. That was, it was such a good move as Charlotte. I think Charlotte's desperate really about that point. I think she's, I think she's, it's very clear she's older than Lizzie and she's just like, be told of the Lizzie and she too knows that she and Lizzie, the odds are not the same for them to finding her finding the right man. And she knows that Lizzie is always going to have an easier time than she is. And one part of her wants to warn Mary, but the other part of her I think is just bitterness really, you know, coming out and saying that, you know, you can do what you like, but you don't realise what your, what the coming life is going to be like for women like us. It's not going to be like your sister's and you should get used to it, but you might as well understand the rules. And then when Mr. Collins arrives, there's a moment where Mary thinks as she has about her father, well, here's a man, couldn't, couldn't I have him? Nobody else wants him. He seems to be, he seems to be no interest to anyone else. And yet on the other hand, it's extraordinarily important that somebody has him to keep all our house and property in the family. And no one's interested, you know, she's taken, she's so disregarded that nobody takes seriously that actually, you know, he might be a prospect for her. And that's sort of where, in a way, where the end of her story is Jane Austin tells it not much more happens to her apart from to be further sidelined, I think. So for me, what had to happen was I thought very strongly that she had to be got out of long-born, you know, she had something, something had to happen. The death of me, I killed off Mr. Bennett because I thought that was necessary. But also the great lifeline and the great transformative engagement for Mary was going to be life with a gardener's and life in London, you know, she had to, she had to escape a world where everybody knew who she was. She had to escape a world where she was, she, if she'd stayed in Hertfordshire, she would always, she'd never have escaped the character that she'd been given before she was 20, you know, she would have always had to carry that around as a burden on her shoulder. And going to the gardener showed her two things really. One, this is what a happy family looks like. This is what a properly functioning family looks like. And we quite like you and why don't you come and join in? And you know, this is, this is her, one of her first steps in, as it were, thawing out a bit, is the, is the affection that she gets from the gardeners. And also just using that family so well because they're lovely and broad and prejudiced and they're a bit of a lifeline for Lizzie too. And then to bring them back in the way that you did was clever, but it was also really convincing and reassuring for any reader who retained a trace of skepticism, thought, oh yes, the gardeners, they're capable of, you know, harmony and family happiness. That was really clever. Janice, I'd love to get to Mr. Collins actually because I think he transformed him as well. But I feel that our listeners will be longing for glimpses of Lizzie and Darcy. So let's speak about them for just a second. So in the other Bennett's sister, they quite brilliantly sort of come across more like Daisy and Tom in the Great Gatsby actually, careless people, beautiful people who are sort of out of the realm of understanding that marry in habits. Can you tell us about how you got to that decision and how you decided to portray them? I think what happens with Lizzie and Donnie? is that they dazzle so brightly. The attraction between them is rendered so brilliantly, is just so convincing and so utterly, utterly overpowering. That you can see that it's all for a while that you see. And I certainly, as a reader, that's past the reason. The other character takes a while before the other characters come into your line of vision because everything, all you, the most in-transing encounters between them, it's such a full of drama and erotic charge. And Darcy is the absolute archetypal, strong, silent, alpha male who falls in love despite himself. I mean, he's, you know, to some extent, he's no one's ever done that better. But so in their own terms, I think, if you were to have said to Lizzie, you know, as later on, I think I do in the book a bit. Lizzie ever realised what her utter obsession and engagement with Darcy, has resulted in, does she realise, for example, that casual getter off the piano remark, you know, how that was enough to break someone's spirit? And I think the truth is, you know, to some extent, I agree with you. They just don't notice, you know, it's just collateral. And then it even, doesn't even see it as collateral damage. It's because it's just, it's just a lot of heart of this is, I think, all about perspective. And Mary isn't in their sight of vision. I don't think they mean to be cruel, but they just are. And some of that cruelty, I think, does come from Lizzie's never known, a man she can't charm, or a circumstance she can't dominate. She's never, she just doesn't know what that feels like. You can see that even in her conversations with Charlotte. So I think there is a kind of indifference there. And one of the things I asked, I just say to myself, all the way through the book, which we've talked about a lot when we were actually making the television series, is we'd all like to think we're Elizabeth, but actually most of us know much more what it is to feel like, to feel like Mary. And I think holding onto that a sense of just being unseen by the main character, being unobserved, being irrelevant, frankly. Yeah, that's wonderful. And of course, also, Lizzie herself has come out of the same emotionally desperate circumstances as Mary in the sense that she has to hold onto her own escape, I suppose. So that's in the mix with her. Yeah, I think that's true, but only up to a point. I mean, the difference is that Mr. Bennet loves her. But Mr. Bennet, she's the only person in that household that Mr. Bennet really, really loves her. That's a really great point. And she's so Lizzie knows. And Lizzie knows she's her father's favourite. And the other great line, let me not see you undergo the horror of marrying somebody who cannot respect you in the most heartfelt thing he ever says. That's because he cares so deeply about Lizzie. So Lizzie is irritated by Mrs. Bennet. She finds her embarrassing and tiresome, and she wishes she wasn't there. And life would be so much easier without her. But when you shift the perspective to Mary, she's not-- you can't bully Lizzie as we discover when Lady Catherine de Burgh tries it. You just can't do it. And I'd say the love of her father has given her a confidence in herself that never, never seriously shaken, I don't think. Great answer. All right. Mr. Collins, everyone's least favourite character in the original. Love that you bring. Except for me, I'm very drawn to the unattractive, unappealing awkward men in novels. I'm a big chasubon fan, and I'm a Mr. Collins fan. So I love-- I'll reconnect those lines. I love what you do with Collins. Well, yes, it's so clever. So tell us about-- Tell us about your process of Mr. Collins. I mean, I just felt here again, we all know that Charlotte is marrying one reason and one reason alone, that she can't stand in. And even when Lizzie goes to visit them later, she realises that Charlotte was a rigid child. So that she hardly ever has to speak to him or come across him and see him. And again, we're supposed to find that sad for Charlotte. Because obviously, this is the price she's paid for choosing marriage over love. She's made a difficult choice. And this is the consequence of it. But it just struck me-- what's the price of Mr. Collins? You know, what does he feel? He must be-- he can't be unaware that the woman who's married can't stand him. I mean, it must have sometimes crossed his mind at some point. Because we never-- I think we ever meet them again without it being implied that Charlotte is really, really not into this man at all. I just wondered-- and then again, I found one of those-- I mean, I can't tell you how many times I'd read Pride and Pride, he just never noticed it. And then he sent chapter 15 of my Penguin edition. And it's just a paragraph. And in it, we discover his father was illiterate and miserly. He would brought him up in an atmosphere of utter-- of utter subjection. And he'd been-- made no friends at university. You know, here is-- it's maybe five lines. And you suddenly get this picture of an equally desperate miserable and isolated childhood. And I just thought, again, just for a while, put your mind into his head. And it-- why is it that all his attempts failed to entertain people? Why is it that Mr. Bennett finds every reference he tries to make so outrageously appalling that he's entertained by it? I mean, it wouldn't take much self-knowledge. It wouldn't take much realization on Mr. Collins' part to understand exactly how what a fool he is regarded as by almost everyone in his circle. And at that point, I just began to ask myself, you know, I mean, one of his real-- one of the mistakes he makes, of course, is, you know, he should have seen that Mary was by far the best one for him. And he should have realized it. And there are even a few moments when, you know, it looks as though he might have got the sinus B squeak a bit. That's squeak a bit. But they never do. And I just wanted them to have an encounter at a later date when Mary goes to a long-born where the Collins is are now living and spends some time in this deeply unhappy household, and in which we see a more synthetic side of Mr. Collins' emerge where the experience of an unhappy marriage has made him think again. And, you know, even he wonders now whether he might have been better, not to aim ridiculously high and hope for Jane Euler's birth, but to settle for someone who might have had some small chance of understanding him. And I think there's quite a lot of pathos in his story. If you, again, take the trouble to just put yourself behind his eyes whenever he says something that seems to just command universal polarity or disdain. And, Channis, can you read that little speech for us, actually? I think it's such a brilliant moment in the book. So I'd love to hear how you manifested what you're just describing, how you bring us into Mr. Collins' point of view. Well, this was me building on some of what I've just said that there's few lines that Austin tells us about Mr. Collins and his family life. He walked to the window and stood staring out at the rooks in the trees. I've always known I did not possess a talent for making friends. My father, you know, was a bitter, disappointed man. There were many things that made him angry, but chief amongst them, I fear, was myself. He made it plain enough. I was the worst of the many of his institutes' life had inflicted upon him. He told me often enough I was worthless. And I soon learned to take myself at his valuation. Then he died. And I thought within my power to change my life forever. Mary was astonished at the unexpected turn of his conversation. She sensed these were confessions he had not volunteered to anyone before and did not rush away as she'd originally intended. He'd been kind to her and she owed him her honest attention. So what did you do, sir? I went up to the university. I was ordained. I thought once I went into the world, I could turn myself into someone different, someone easy and obliging, but it didn't work. Other men seemed to have the knack of it, but I could never see how it was done. I was stiff and odd and awkward. No matter how I tried, I always struck and I suspect still continue to strike the wrong note. Mary looked down and barrisped. I love that passage. I love the fact that you take one of the most unappealing characters in literature and turn them on his head and suddenly make him a very vulnerable, empathetic character. And so what we're going to do now, Janice, is we are going to follow Mary in the next stage of your brilliant book. She leaves the colonzers and heads down to London, stay with her aunt's uncle, the gardeners. So we're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back and look at Mary's life in London. Janice, the first half of the book, we're kind of in pride in prejudice territory. And frequently we're getting famous scenes from pride in prejudice as seen for Mary's point of view. But it means halfway through the book, when you bump off Mr. Bennett, as you described earlier, there's this exhilaration as a reader because we're halfway through the book and we are now in post-pried and prejudice territory. Anything can happen from this point. And Mary coming to London is, you can feel the freedom and exhilaration she feels. So what was the, how did it feel getting to that moment, Janice, where you've had pride in prejudice, both as a kind of map to follow, but a very daunting map. How did you feel? at this moment suddenly going into the wide open landscape or frontier land of post-pried and prejudice. Scared? Scared? I think that I was very excited about it. It's fun. The garden is really fascinating because there are obviously a part of 18th century society that Austin and her family knew quite well. The trading merchant up a middle class moneyed tradesmen of London, but who very, rarely, really feature in her novels. I mean, the gardeners do, there are a couple of other occasions when people like that feature, but we don't often meet them. I was just intrigued by what the life is because obviously both Lizzy and Jane spend time with the gardener specifically to retreat from their mother and be given a bit of space to recalibrate themselves for what comes next. We know who the gardeners are from that point, but I just wanted to capture some of that London that you read about in, I'm a great reader of diaries and letters. I just never happier than when I found a lovely set of 18th century correspondence to just to read. A lot of that obviously centers on London and I don't think it's a picture that we see very often in Austin land. I was quite excited by the idea of what would it feel like? Where do the gardeners live? What kind of, what does their sociability look like? What does it feel like when they give a dinner? What's the chat around the table like? Because obviously there are infinitely kind parents and the mares and the gardeners themselves are aware of it. They know only to work on what Mrs. Bennet can be like. They bring in Mary to, I would phrase I suppose I would use with that 18th century, one easy sociability. I like the idea of that. I just like the idea that people drop in. It's a big city. Something is always happening and therefore there's a sense that actually Mary gradually becomes aware of. This is a place where you can remake yourself. You can not everyone knows your story and there's the possibility here of meeting people who haven't been friends of your parents for years who don't know every single thing about you. Who are just, you know, doing an Austin famously refers to that little bit inch of ivory that she paints her novels on. And I think this was a chance for Mary to run away from that little inch and find a bigger, bigger place where maybe there might just be the chance that she might meet someone who had similar interest to her own. So for me it was a place of excitement and possibility and just trying to think what it would be like for someone like Mary just to walk up Grace Church Street. What did that feel like? Also just to capture what does a happy family sound like in Austin land? How did Mrs. Gardner speak to themselves? How do they talk to their children? What do they let them do? It was the entry point, if you like, for the love interest for Mary. She meets both of her suitors really who emerges her suitors. She meets via the agency of the of the Gardner's Tom Haywood who she meets first is a is a is a little friend of the Gardner's, he's a London lawyer. He's like many professional men. He's got a day job that he's good at but oh how he wishes he was a poet, you know, he would he wishes he but he's sensible enough to know it's not going to happen but that's what gets him through his day. Like so many lawyers in fact it's really well observed about lawyers. They all want to be writers in my experience or a lot of them do and I can quite see why but on the other hand they I like the idea he was a lawyer because he would appreciate that other side of Mary you know that sort of exacting information loving, rule obeying all those things that Mary has got to learn can be part of her life but maybe perhaps not all of it and I quite you know I can't enjoy thinking where would they meet you know where would they go? What would how would their first encounters take place? What kind of conversations would they have? You know what books would they talk about? And who would he would be? And as you know just trying to think you know what kind of man would be right for Mary? What kind of person might you find attractive? There might find something attractive in her. So that was all part of making the London leap if you'd like. So as we know one of Jane Austen's biggest influences was Fanny Bernie. Fanny Bernie is a great writer of London, both in Fanny Bernie's diaries but also her novels. She writes about London and London society and I love the fact that you use the second half to do an homage to Jane Austen's love of Fanny Bernie. It's very very clever but the other literary twist that happens here and I think this is the moment where I really feel that you are taking us out of our Austin land into another world is the interest that Mr Haywood has in the romantic poets in Wordsworth and he gives Mary a copy of Lyrical Ballad Wordsworth and Colourage. And it's one of the things that's fascinated Austin Scholars is that Austin lives through this period. She lives through the heyday of Wordsworth and Colourage in the romantic poets but never seems that interested in them. I mean she'll do a shout out to Walter Scott or Byron I think get to mention at one point and when Austin does mention poets she seems too much more interested in the kind of mid-18th century the Thomas Grey's and the Cooters. I tell you what it was interesting to me and this just informed my thinking about this and I think Austin in the end is the product of what you might call the pre-romantic enlightenment. When you look at all the all the poets you love when you look at what she reads you know in the end she is this is what's so interesting really there's a lot of Mary in Austin I think you know she she prizes a award and and she you know she's interested in the mind and she she likes you like that her idea of a happy ending is balance I don't want to get into the Bronti versus Austin thing but there's clearly a world of well something's happened between those those two writers and I think Austin is on the cusp of it but I think when you read the few letters that we have of the left of her you can tell that that was never going to be her way of engaging with the world I think but I wanted I think Mary is slightly younger than Austin I've always had in my mind that she is and I think it's impossible really to overestimate what kind of sea change the popularity of the romantic's made to a whole generation of people who were young in that moment and you know for them it was it must have seemed a completely we're talking about Pope earlier on you know it's it's such a different world it's such a it's such and it's encouragement to you to look inward to yourself it's encouragement for you to express things which the previous generation sort of best unsaid or perhaps just referred to it's a it's a it's a it's a psychological shift of a huge kind and I think I felt that it was going to be the way that the through reading words were in particular she was this interest in emotion and nature and the connection between the life of the mind and the life of the life of the life of feeling I thought that actually this would be the way that as it were Haywood would get under her defenses and get her to think that this is what a different kind of emotional life looks like so much almost like saying try it just see what it feels like to live in this man's head for a while and just to allow yourself to to give way to some of the feelings that are expressed here you know to allow yourself to to have that sensation to allow yourself as it were the freedom to go with him the freedom to suddenly think that all the other all the things that you've in you somehow imbibed about yourself that you are what you are forever that are there are limitations to what you can and should feel that the road to happiness for you lies in suppressing any feelings of of yearning that somehow through learning to appreciate those poems she would have her eye had the veil might fall from her eyes and that she might and and somehow I think he felt that the way of doing that was with words you know she's somebody whose whole life has been bold reading and thinking and that somehow this was the way to to reach her as it were to reach the the feeling feeling nature that he think has been locked up underneath I'm going to ask you to read that moment Janice because it's such a powerful moment and when I was reading it I thought this is the moment that Mary has grown out of Austin it's when she and Haywood talk about wordsworth and it's the moment where I feel that this character has left behind her creator she's into this entirely different sensibility you are describing and I I loved the way throughout the scene as well you keep stopping and describing what's happening in the square and the streets outside and I'm interested why it's very effective and I'm interested what you were trying to do with that as well this sudden pulling away to describe the noises of the streets well she's just heard this is about Mary is just finally after many many tries when she just can't really see what it is that wordsworth is trying to achieve there's a moment as it were when she gets it and this is how I talk about it she long to describe to him how it happened, the flash of insight that had come upon her unawares as she lay reading in bed. The excitement she had felt engrossed being what the poet intended, the way she'd hugged herself with a sheer pleasure of seeing it at last. But this was too much to be said, even to Mr. Hayward. So poetry has touched you then, he replied with a playful smile. It has broken through that rational reserves. It is unfair to mock me, sir, and very ungenerous too. Yes, I'm wrong to do so, he admitted, his expression gradually becoming more serious. "In truce, I'm delighted for you. You have experienced the sensation I know I could not live without. And I'm exceedingly happy for you." Will you tell me which poem it was that affected you so strongly? She turned her page marked with a piece of paper. It is this one. She reached across the table and handed the book silently to him, 'Tin turn Abbey.' He looked up and their eyes met. 'It's extraordinary that there should be your favourite. It's mine too. I like it best of all Mr. Wordsworth's works. In the distance she heard the muffled rumble of the city-street's. Upstairs the children ran around in the nursery, their footsteps loud on the wooden floor. The drawing-room in contra are seen remarkably still. In the silence she was suddenly very aware of Mr. Hayward's presence of his hands holding the book of the whiteness of his cuffs against his dark coat.' 'So good. Is Tintan Abbey your favourite Wordsworth poem, Gemma? Yes, it is.' Mine too. I absolutely love it. I think you can write it your entitled to put it in. It's all yours. So yes, I think what I was trying to suggest there, this is the breakthrough. This is the moment when she finally grasps that there's something beyond the life of the mind that she thinks is all that is to be offered to her. When she sees just, she gets a glimpse of a different way of being, of a different way of seeing the world. And also the first moment I think when she realises what she really feels about Hayward. The same time as she's seeing the world differently, she suddenly sees him in a different way too. He's suddenly there as a very strong male presence, somebody who she's very, very aware of that he has given her this pleasure, if you like. Exactly. So let's talk a little bit about Mr. Hayward. So in some ways he's a Henry Tillney character from North Fagora Abbey. Or I'm trying to think which other Austin. No, I'll stop for that one. Because you're absolutely right. You're completely right. He is Henry Tillney. No one has said that to me before but you're absolutely right. He was right from the beginning. I wanted him to be Henry Tillney was my model. So you're completely right about that. Well I have to give John T. Credit to that. I absolutely hate to give credit where it's to you but John T. picked up on that so well done. You're completely correct. Do you know what the clue was his interest in fabric and Muslims? I don't know. I know. He was a little bit of a kid away. Don't they call that a road? Only one other man from the early 19th century, late 18th century, who's interested in fabric and that's Tillney. Yeah, no it's really good. It actually makes me think about lots of ways in which you've sort of cherry-picked some great moments from the other Austin novels, not in a noisy way at all, but just you know obviously been thinking about how Austin was married. I just love Mrs. Tillney. I really love him. I really love him. And he's great for Catherine which is also one of the ways that you've nicely picked up on that kind of dynamic. So yeah tell us about your thinking with Mr. Haywood. Well there is the reason I always warm to Mr. Tillney is because he's so funny. He sort of makes jokes. Much as we might be very you know, overwhelmed by Mr. Darcy's sheer sexual lure, you don't really imagine him being very somebody prone to make many jokes. And I like what Henry Tillney's always got some you know, sort of slightly archer mark to make. And I like that he just seems to really like being you know, he just likes being with women. He just seems to be very very happy in the company of women. And and he's not at all, he's very at ease with himself you know. He's sort of I never thought that the kind of hit the kind of man that Mary would respond to would be somebody of the sort of Darcy or even Captain Wentworth type you know somebody who is a very very highly masculine alpha male. One of the great pleasures in gaining him as it as it were is to see him force to admit how much he loves you. You know I never thought that would be right for Mary. I thought she needed somebody to warm her up. You know she needs somebody who will be patient with her who will take trouble and who will always though recognize when no this isn't the time to make to mock or to make a joke. This is this is serious you know now she now she needs to be heard. Somebody who would just show her also how to be you know how how to manage a dinner table how to how to do the simple things that come so easily to others as Mr Colin said you know that she that he would be exactly the kind of warm can't there be a warm kindness about him right from the beginning which I hope would be very instrumental in her journey you know that she would see you know it's been this I don't need to this is met this man doesn't make me anxious doesn't make me twitchy I'm I'm just able to be with him and and he cares about the similar things that I like her about but you know he's a and I like the idea is what he's a London professional character again you know I didn't want I didn't want her to have to go back to Hertfordshire or you know to marry to marry a Mr Knightley or you know to to be back in the in the old country landscape again I thought that the best place for Mary was always going to be as part of that a fluently educated social London landscape and you're so right about that because the other the other Austin couple who I suppose you could have gone to was Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram you know in Mansfield Park I think that would have been the worst you know I mean it Kingsley Ames who said dinner with dinner dinner with Fanny Price and with dinner with the Bertrams would not have been lightly undertaken much as you admire the much as you admire the purpose behind they're coming together so it's not it's not it's not my idea of what would have suited Mary again I just think she needs to be in a place where there's life and energy and you know a country factory would have been the very worst place for her I just think she needs to be you know she needs to be in a place that is bigger than she is and where there's churn and the ability to I don't know I often imagined I imagine I had in mind how when you know the Haywoods would go and matter they go to Konritch's lectures or go and see Humphrey David demonstrating chemistry you know they do they go to the Royal Academy exhibition that's the kind of life that they would live together and you know at that point it was pretty difficult to do that to that extent anywhere except in London so it had to be a London had to be a London a London centric romance I think although a lot of it takes place outside London that's where I wanted them to end up I'm right from the beginning I knew exactly the house I had in mind at the very end I used to walk past it and he's lived in London love that over the course of the book we see Mary start to exert more and more agency and early on there's a scene where Charlotte says to Mary look people like us we can't just sit there and wait for good things to happen we've got to decide what we want and go out and take it and it takes Mary a very long time to really start doing that but she does towards the end of the book we have this character who's gone on this extraordinary journey in which she's she's learned how to understand her needs and her wants and how to act on them and take what she wants as well and I would really interested if you were deliberately making a critique of Austin's heroines in this and there is no blanket role Austin has heroines who are more passive she has others who who exert a lot of agency and do take things but I was wondering if you were deliberately trying to do something with the idea of the Austin heroine if you were trying to take it in a different direction I think it was very true that there's a moment when Mr Collins gives in my book Mr Collins gives Mary a slipper paper that he's translated from Aristotle and the translation goes something like we know we make our own happiness you know we're responsible for making our own happiness and certainly part of Mary's journey is she sees how you have to work for what you want as she says you know she sees that the gardeners work at their marriage you know that's why they're happy because they work hard at it she sees how nothing is going to let you know for most people things don't fall in their laps lovely you know you do have to work at what you want but part of that is is I return to my idea about the Austin journey that actually that only becomes effective when you know what it is that you really desire you know only when you really know yourself can you really really get what you want and actually I think that's true of pretty much every Austin heroine I think they all do you know each one of them in the end You could argue that perhaps the only one is Fanny Price, where in the end Edmund does. sort of fall into marriage slightly. I mean, we're, you know, all we hear for Boston is, you know, suddenly six months later they're married. It Austin doesn't tell us much about how it comes about. But I think for all the other, all the other Austin herringer and herringer, that is, that is their agency. You know, that is how they declare their agency is by learning from experience by actually changing because an each in their same way they all do, you know, even, even Anne Elliott, who is perhaps the, you know, she, there's a moment when she has changed enough to be able, it's true that Mary is in the end quite forceful in declaring what she wants. But, you know, Anne Elliott knows she's making it pretty clear in that, the in and bath when she says the long speech about, you know, some of us love forever and, you know, we, we're not like men, we love to, I can't remember exactly, but, you know, that I, we love longer when there is no hope. She's really speaking to Captain Wentworth, you know, we're to understand that. And she's only able to do that because she's like, being persuaded, that it was, is not the path for anyone to go on. She's let herself be persuaded too many times. And actually now, in the best way she knows how she is going to assert what she wants now. And she does that it may not be, it may not be assertion in the way that it might happen in her own time. But, you know, that is a very, I think, a very assertive moment. So I think every Austin heroine has that, has that moment when they actually declare and are forceful. And in a way, I think I would say Mary is following in the footsteps of the Austin heroines rather than striking at new ground. It's just that it looks different for her because, you know, she, she's found a very different way. So the language, by which she expresses it, isn't the same, but I think it's the same. It's the same pathway. Yeah. And for great kind of comparison with that an Elliott moment where the agent sees there, but the agency's kind of complicated. I just looked up, looked it up. It's all the privilege I can claim for my own sex. Is that of loving longest when existence or hope is gone? And it's got a little bit of that same sensibility in the other Bennett sisters. It's really wonderful. I mean, it is a declaration, isn't it? You know, she, the man she loves is sitting right next to her and she knows he's listening. You know, she can see that I think Austin tells us he stops writing. He lifts his pen from the paper. The whole of that scene is really, I mean, as you say, in the terms in which it was possible for her to express it, but the whole of that scene is about making it really clear in however way she can that she wants him back. So it's a great, great. That's right. Yeah. So it's even there is agency there, but it has to accommodate itself to what's possible. To what's possible in that world? Yeah. We, we must release you into it back into the French wilds, but this has been a such a joyful and illuminating conversation. And the thing that's really striking me as you're speaking is the depth with which you've read Austin and not only Austin, but Austin's contemporaries, the romantic writers, the other novelists of the period and the way that all of these kind of rich literary pieces are in this very playful, very fun and ostensibly light novel that you've written. But there's a depth to it that undergirds it and makes it completely convincing. It's just, I'm so admiring of what you've done. Well, thank you. That's a massive compliment. Thank you very much indeed. It was a great pleasure to talk to you both. That had such a good time. [Music]