John Mullan

That's really good because it won't give me any illusions about trying to nab him again.

I mean, it's funny and it's poignant and often the persuasion is brilliantly both those things at the same time.

Well, I think one thing you get from persuasion, if you think about how words like spirits are used, is a sense of kind of complexity, which I sometimes think our blanket use of the word depression robs us of.

I mean, depression, let's face it, is always bad.

But a word like melancholy isn't necessarily bad.

It might sensitise somebody like Anne Elliot.

to other people's feelings, to the impressions of the time of year.

And when you look at spirits in the novel, I mean, one of the striking things is, and it's so often the case with Jane Austen, it's not either good or bad.

Louisa Musgrove, who is the...

the sister of Charles Musgrove, who's married Anne's younger sister.

Louisa, when Captain Wentworth turns up again, is one of two sisters, along with Henrietta Musgrove, who Captain Wentworth seems to be interested in.

And Anne Elliot...

watches this in a kind of agony.

And Louisa has high spirits.

Is that good?

Maybe.

I mean, it makes her good fun to dance with.

It makes her sort of glow.

It makes Captain Wentworth apparently drawn to her.

But it also makes her sort of prone to disaster.