Jane Austen’s enduring and universal appeal revealed by hit writers, from Pride & Prejudice 1995 screenwriter to David Baddiel

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

This year, the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen, has seen ample celebration of the life and works of this singular observer of English life in the early 19th century. So far on TV, we’ve had a three-part documentary exploring Austen’s rebel spirit, the drama Miss Austen starring Keeley Hawes, and soon to follow is another version of Pride and Prejudice, this time with some big Netflix bucks and an all-star cast.

When it comes to Austen, it seems broadcasters never scrimp, and Radio 4 is proving no exception – celebrating this important anniversary in style, with a dedicated season that has already featured a new take on Northanger Abbey, Radio 4 Extra mining its archive of classic dramas, and newly commissioned radio dramatisations of Pride and Prejudice (see below right) and, next weekend, Sense and Sensibility. The latter is also explored in a special episode of Bookclub on Tuesday (Austen’s 250th birthday) with Emma Thompson.

Fans can also feast on a ten-part factual series, When I Met Jane Austen, in which her biographer, Dr Paula Byrne, asks a star line-up of guests – David Baddiel, Katherine Rundell, Val McDermid, Kate Atkinson, Andrew Davies, Amy Heckerling, Gurinder Chadha, Marlon James, Colm Tóibín and Philippa Perry – about how Austen’s work has shaped and influenced their lives and own creative efforts.

Like so many of Austen’s many millions of fans across the world, psychotherapist and bestselling author Perry can barely remember life without recourse to the wit and wisdom of the author she credits with “changing her life” after she first encountered her work aged 12, and studied Pride and Prejudice for English O-level.

So, what is so special about Austen’s small but peerless collection of works that includes six novels (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion), one novella (Lady Susan) and the tantalisingly unfinished The Watsons and Sanditon? “It’s like having a gossip with a good friend when you’re working out what people are like,” says Perry, who has been working out what makes people tick for more than 40 years, since she first volunteered for the Samaritans.

Perry is the author of four bestselling books, including the ground-breaking The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did), which was published in 2019 and became one of the great breakout publishing hits of lockdown. She takes a keen psychologist’s eye to Austen’s writing and is convinced that, despite the author writing about social mores observed more than 200 years ago, she continues to have a great influence on her own work today.

“She is such a great observer of human behaviour,” she reflects. “I remember quotes from her that remain fresh and relevant. For example, ‘To be sure, you knew no actual good of me – but nobody thinks of that when they fall in love.’ This is Elizabeth Bennet explaining to her suitor Darcy that no one falls in love with someone because they are good.”

Austen was an observer, not a speculator, adds Perry. “She never had a scene where men were talking together without a woman present because, being a woman, she had never observed that.” For Perry, that makes the author the most reliable of documenters of the human condition. “Observation, observation, observation. She may have made up the stories, but she observed humans rather than reinventing them.”

What subjects would Austen be writing about if she were alive today? Perry doesn’t believe her style would be any different: “She’d be noticing how humans are with each other and what becomes of them because of how they are with each other.”

Speaking as one observer of the human condition in consideration of another, would Austen have made a good psychotherapist? Perry has no doubt. “She and Shakespeare would have had a phenomenal practice!”

David Baddiel - Comedian and author

“I’ve never met anyone who said, ‘Oh, my God, you like Jane Austen. What’s wrong with you? I thought you were just a football lad.’ But I used to have a Times column and the people I wrote most about were John Updike and Jane Austen. I was writing against the voice that thinks Jane Austen is just a lovable maiden aunt, but also probably against the voice that was ‘David Baddiel and his Three Lions and laddishness likes Jane Austen? That can’t be right!’ I like the fact that’s challenging. But, I’m a storyteller primarily, and Austen is possibly the greatest storyteller in English literature, so I’m always going to love her.”

Andrew Davies - Writer of the 1995 TV dramatisation of Pride and Prejudice

“I first read Pride and Prejudice in school and remember really enjoying it right from the start. That was the one I taught most often as a teacher. I used to read it aloud to sixth formers. You think, isn’t that a terrible waste of time? Just reading aloud like they were little kids, but they would get so much more and then be able to read it themselves. One of the things I always said in teaching is that this book is not just about social fripperies and little bits of irony. It’s about sex and money and primal urges and all sorts of big important things.”

Katherine Rundell - Children’s author

“I first met Jane Austen when I was really quite young, maybe nine or 10, at a time that I don’t think I would have had the stamina to read her. She is absolutely staggering. [Her Juvenilia] is like no other young person’s writing I have ever encountered in my life. It is so funny; it is so sharp. The majority of the children’s writing that I read has not yet worked out that the way a character moves through a plot is what makes a story. Children usually don’t have enough of a hinterland of knowledge of the way normal literature might work to understand how you might subvert it.”

Kate Atkinson - Creator of the Jackson Brodie crime novels

“You read Mansfield Park and think, well, that’s not Emma. That’s not Pride and Prejudice. I’m not sure I like that book. I revisited Fanny Price and Mansfield Park a few years ago, and wondered: why did she write this book?

She’d had success with Pride and Prejudice, which she started writing quite early in her life. So at that point, she knew she was a writer, but I think that she wanted to write something that established her as a real writer, that showed she knew how to shape a novel, that she wasn’t just going to be writing Elizabeth Bennet — because there must have been a pull to write Pride and Prejudice Two.”

Val McDermid - Crime novelist

“I first read Northanger Abbey when I was 17, the same age as Catherine Morland and I thought, she’s ridiculous, she’s stupid. And then when I read the book again when I was in my early 30s, because I was trying to break down people who I considered to be good storytellers to see how they work, I was very impressed.

I could see the humour in it and I could see why it was important to have the kind of central character that she had. The third time I read it, I was in my 50s and had a son. I saw it from the perspective of the parent, where your child is going out into the world and you’re anxious about them but you also realise the absurdity of your behaviour in many respects. Every time I read it, it’s like reading it for the first time.”

Amy Heckerling - Writer of the movie Clueless, which updated Emma to modern LA

“When I was in college at NYU, I took a class on British literature. We read Dickens and Sir Walter Scott and we read Emma, as a representation of Jane Austen. I just loved the book, I went crazy for it. It was so wonderful to read about such a strong, confident character. To pick up a book from another world and another time, and to find it so right on the money about what it’s like to be a young person — you can jump through time like that, and reach us.”

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