John Mullan

I think they were a really rather terrific family, actually.

I think that they were open-minded, intelligent, humorous, optimistic people.

I think they were a family who valued Jane's talents and her intelligence and enjoyed hearing her read bits of her writing to them.

And I think that one can't

overestimate how important that must have been to her.

Yeah.

I mean, it's interesting because Persuasion, it's a novel which is sort of edged by death.

Almost everybody in the novel is in mourning for somebody or other and wearing black, in fact.

But it's sort of written against death and actually even comically so.

One of the subplots of the novel, which is just the most satisfying subplot, there's this man, Captain Bennett, and he was engaged to the sister of Captain Wentworth's best friend, Captain Harville.

And while he was at sea, she died.

He's absolutely heartbroken.

And yet after Louisa Musgrove's accident, he tends to her and then...

Blow me down.

A few weeks later, they're engaged.

There's this wonderful sentence.

When Anne's thinking about Captain Bennet, he had an affectionate heart.

He must love somebody.

You can imagine somebody saying that second sentence dismissively, mockingly.

But it's not mocking.