Sanditon, the period drama based on an unfinished novel by Jane Austen, is back for a third series. But despite some rave reviews, not all Austen-heads are happy. UCL’s Professor John Mullan, Austen expert and author of What Matters In Austen, gave us his reaction to the latest instalment: “Cripes!”
The TV adaptation – which has been running since 2019 – has now exhausted most of the source material, so showrunner Andrew Davies has developed original storylines to carry on the Austen universe or “Austen-verse”.
“The TV Sanditon no longer has anything whatsoever to do with Austen,” said Professor Mullan, who affectionately refers to the author as “the blessed Jane”. “Andrew Davies really is veering off piste,” thinks Mullan, noting a new romantic sub-plot that involves a Duke who is gay. “Jane Austen is the most hetero-normative of novelists,” said Mullan, “there were, of course, posh men who were gay in the Regency period, but not in Austen’s novels or, indeed, her letters.”
Adaptations of her work tend to divide fans between originalists and the more open-minded. But at least they can all agree Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was a step too far.
Smiling Smith predicts election wipe-out
Author Zadie Smith is getting political in the run-up to next year’s election. “I’m gonna skip down to that ballot box with a smile on my face,” she said in a recent interview. “It’s gonna be a wipeout. I don’t have any doubt. Middle-class people are suffering, working-class people are suffering. People aren’t getting fed,” Smith told Vogue in its landmark September Issue. During the interview, which took place near her native Willesden, Smith gave a homeless person who approached her a ten pound note. She said every billionaire “is a criminal” and spoke of the burden of a £250,000 advance she got for her first novel, White Teeth. “I felt it like a responsibility,” she says, “I earned it retrospectively, I hope.” Smith admits even she can be tempted by consumerism. “I perceive myself as a fairly terrible person... I waste a lot of money on fashion. I have an entirely guilt-laden relationship with it.” Sometimes you’re your own harshest critic.
Jordan Peterson book blurb debacle continues
Controversy in the literary world over Jordan Peterson’s latest book rolls on. Some British reviewers claim their words were twisted to make bad reviews look good on the blurb. Yesterday Peterson’s UK publisher, Penguin, held a high-level meeting to discuss the issue, which seems to have squeezed relations with some newspapers. “It happens a lot in publishing,” a Penguin staffer told us, “I will often take a ‘meh’ review and scavenge the single decent quote. Usually no one cares. A lot happens on the down low.” This time the fame of Peterson, right, got the better of them.
