John Mullan
speaker
250 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2025
last heard 28 Jan
John Mullan’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 — 3 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 2.
Appearances
She's scrawny and tired and spiritless.
And she replays these words in her head.
And of course, it's, you'd think, very painful.
And then it says this extraordinary thing.
She soon began to rejoice that she had heard these words.
They were of sobering tendency.
They allayed agitation.
They composed and consequently must make her happier.
Now, that's not Jane Austen saying they must make her happier.
That's sort of Anne in her head saying, yes, this is great.
He doesn't find me attractive anymore.
I may fancy him still, but he doesn't fancy me.
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.
Showing 161–180 of 250 · page 9 of 13
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