Jonty Claypole

It's so racy.

It's so brilliant.

I actually prefer that first half of Belinda, I think, to anything Jane Austen wrote.

But yes, for me, the problem is, is that the second half, she just steers that car right off into a ditch.

Yeah, brilliant.

Worthy of Austin, really is.

You would.

And in a way, this is the headline act in a bizarre way, but is also probably the least known.

This is a woman called Elizabeth Inchbold.

Now, we know that Jane Austen was fascinated with Elizabeth Inchbold.

Any reader and lover of Mansfield Park will remember that the sort of central moment in the novel hinges around the

whether these young characters at Mansfield Park are going to put on a production, a private production of a play called Lover's Vows.

And Lover's Vows, the play we discover, is very, very racy.

And a number of the characters consider it an entirely inappropriate thing to be doing.

And in fact, Fanny Price herself is very disapproving.

And when Sir Thomas Bertram returns from his long trip to the West Indies, he immediately puts a stop to the whole thing.

So this play was written by a woman called Elizabeth Inchbold, and she is very much the Phoebe Waller-Bridge of her time.

And I'm not saying that in a lazy way.

No, no, she really was.

Anyone listening is going to end up thinking, oh, my God, Phoebe Waller-Bridge has gone back in time and had a career as a woman called Elizabeth Inchbold.