Anna Walker
speaker
274 appearances
5 recordings
4 series
first heard Dec 2025
last heard 2 Jul
Anna Walker’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
One thing all of Austen's heroines, including Anne Elliot, have in common is a happy ending.
They all marry respectable and kind men, build comfortable homes for themselves and generally end the novel in a more joyful place than they started it.
But what of Jane's own ending?
Would you say she was ultimately happy at the end of her life?
Freya, let's start with you.
We also get a brilliant passage in a letter where she tells us of her, the pleasure she gets from a recipe for sponge cake, don't we?
Well, whether or not we ever will know if Jane was happy, we certainly know that she laughed.
So that's a nice, enduring image to have of her.
Thank you both for your happy company today.
It's been such a pleasure talking with you.
Though we can use her remaining letters, novels, and the accounts of her descendants to piece together the puzzle of her life, a full picture of Jane Austen the woman remains elusive.
Every line she wrote contains a double meaning, every sentiment she shared might as easily be a joke, and the more I learn about her from our academic experts, the more I believe that's just how she liked it.
There are only two known paintings of Jane, both by her sister Cassandra.
One of them you probably know, the now famous portrait on the £10 note hanging in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
The other was painted during one of their trips to Lyme Regis.
In it, Jane's sitting beneath a tree, her back turned to us.
She's wearing a pale blue dress with a matching bonnet, her hand resting gently on her knee.
We can only just see a sliver of her face peeking out from under the brim of her hat.
The novel Austen was writing when she died, Sanditon, was set in a seaside town inspired by Lyme.
It's a fitting final resting place then, not where her body lies in the cold vaults of Winchester Cathedral.
Showing 241–260 of 274 · page 13 of 14
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