Darcy through Elizabeth's eyes

What do you look for in a portrayal of Mr Darcy?

For me, it's the casting of Elizabeth, because we only ever see him through her eyes.

Christmas 2013 finally gave us the opportunity to see Darcy and Eliza in a new light, almost 20 years after Colin Firth and that lake. Firth's very still, somber version was brought to emotional life by Jennifer Ehle's brilliantly boisterous Lizzy, a hero for tomboys everywhere. Without her performance, and a wet shirt, I think we'd have forgetten him within a week. Look at Knightley and McFadyen......

In Death Comes to Pemberley, Anna Maxwell Martin gave me the grown-up Lizzy (and Darcy) I've always craved.

And we even saw Lizzy and Darcy GETTING IT ON.

I sat stunned as I realised we were heading for a love scene, in Austen! After the initial shock I started cheering and dancing around the room. I still can't quite believe it happened.

I don't care much for a whodunnit, but I do care about Lizzy and Darcy.  I feared the worst, a Bridget Jones the third, stuck in a pre-Darcy time warp and failing to move the character on. But she was everything I expected. Bold, beautiful and still slightly frayed around the edges (and muddy around the hem). Pemberley hasn't changed her.

I fell in love all over again. Anna Maxwell Martin showed me an Elizabeth I wanted to be and Matthew Rhys played a tormented and torn Darcy, always battling between his head and his heart. Filled with pain, seething and grumpy - just how I like him.

Colin who?

Darcy, Austen and Me

“If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged.”

That line gets me every time.

It’s 200 years to the day since Pride & Prejudice was published (is that all?) and it’s still being discovered for the first time by readers all over the world. I still regularly flick through the well-thumbed pages of my copy, or listen to the audio book to lull me to sleep. As familiar and reassuring to me as an old dog.

Looks just like my husband! ?!

I’m not ashamed to admit that I spent my teenage years devouring Jackie Collins novels on a beach, rather than Austen novels in a window seat. I mainly obsessed about Tom Cruise in Top Gun, Rob Lowe in St Elmo's Fire and Kiefer Sutherland in Lost Boys. Then I saw Laurence Olivier play Darcy in the 1940s film version and I was hooked. That was it, Darcy was the man for me.

There's just something about aloof, moody, melancholy men, isn’t there?  I'd assumed I've always been drawn to them, but on reflection (writing this post) I'm beginning to wonder how much reading Pride & Prejudice during my hormone-charged teenage years shaped my taste in men forever.

So over the last 20 years I’ve read and re-read P&P and Austen’s other novels, I even went through a phase of writing letters in an Austen-styley, thankfully that's over.

And then I went and married my very own Darcy - dark, brooding, mysterious - at least that’s how I see him (and he’s not keen on me saying that!). He’s a watered down version, with all the bits I like and none of the bits I don’t.

Anyway, I could never have married a Bingley; there isn’t enough room for two smiley, silly people in this relationship.

Happy Anniversary P&P. Sigh. *dreams of Colin Firth*