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*

Confessions of an amateur pap

I have a paparazzi confession to make.

I’m a costume drama pap and I have, on many previous occasions, gone in search of houses-made-famous-by-the-BBC.  Andrew Davies’s adaptation of Pride & Prejudice has a lot to answer for; I even considered getting married at Lyme Park.

Luckily, a National Trust membership and a car gets you access to most of the houses you see in TV dramas and films. But not this one……



Longbourn - The Bennetts



To get this picture I had to drag my other half on a 12 mile hike armed only with an OS map and a couple of cereal bars. It’s a private house and I had to get a leg up to peer over the wall for this shot. Worth it though wasn’t it?

On another occasion I tagged along with a reporter friend on the pretence of ‘work experience’ and tried to gatecrash Paul Scholes’ wedding so I could get a shot of the Beckhams, the Nevilles and Sir Ryan Giggs.

But my sister is MUCH worse. She drives around whole counties looking for houses that match the one she’s cut out of an OK magazine photo shoot. Well she did once anyway, it took all day and I was with her (for moral support).

Yep, him again.

She never did find his house or meet him, but my brother got to (at a fan club party my sister dragged him to so she didn’t look sad). HA.