Now,

you've had a longstanding interest in Jane Austen. What's your sense if you think of late Georgian theatre in England, which was a big influence on Austen, but just how good was it? If you or I went to one of those plays, would we be bored? Would we think it's stupid? Would we be amazed and wonder why the theatre had declined? What do you think? Obviously, it's guesswork, but you must have a sense.

I think they did it quite interestingly because they would do like a five act serious play and then there would be like a farce and then there would be a dance. And so there was a little bit of something for everybody. So you could go and see your Shakespeare. And I think particularly in the Georgian era, this is the time when those really great actors, you know, Sarah Siddons and, you know, obviously Garak coming to the end of Garak. but Kemp Keane, Edmund Keane, George Cook, Dora Jordan, these absolutely brilliant actors. And it's so hard because we don't know why they were so great. I mean, Jane Austen talks about Edmund Keane in her letters and says he's so natural. But we don't know what that means. To us, it's like we think of method acting, don't we? We might go to Sean Penn or we might go to the great method actors. And so when they say, oh, he's so natural, what does that actually mean? It can't mean the same thing that it can mean to us. But what I do know is it wasn't like declamation and, you know, throwing your hands and being over the top. It was tempered down. I think when Joan Austen calls it real hardened acting, good acting is real hardened acting. So I think there was definitely, you could see some of that. But a lot of people just sometimes went for the farce. And the farces, I think, were great. Like, She Stoops to Conquer is hilarious. So the rivals, Sheridan, people would just go and, you know, spend, they'd go halfway in and see the last bit of the main play and then they'd see some great farce. And I think often people went to see each other, you know, they went to look at each other. So there was a lot of gazing around the room and who's there, what are they wearing, what are they doing? And also it's very noisy. So people didn't sit there in deference like they do now. They'd be chatting and jostling and talking and it was much more sociable. And it's a place where the classes intermingle. And there aren't many places like that in Georgian society because it's so stratified. So I think it's really fascinating as a sort of social space where you might mistake a prostitute with a fine lady because she's wearing the clothes of a fine lady because she's bought them secondhand. You've got all these interesting things going on, but I think it would be really good fun. And

how is the farce related to Austen? Well,

she loved farce. You know, in her letters, she talks about going to see Don Duran. And it's a farce. And she's like, a compound of cruelty and lust, she calls it. And there's other farces that she, the wonder, a woman keeps a secret, it's not very feminist um by Susan Sontleva and she's laughing she says oh the farce really pleased me and I think she had quite low taste I think she was hard to please so she really liked the farce and also she used to take the children of the family so they'd like a good farce so I think she was quite eclectic in her taste but you know these clowns were really funny and they were really good and I think I say she wasn't a snob she wasn't an intellectual snob she didn't just she did want to see Mrs Siddons in the great Shakespearean roles but she also loved comedy and she is a comic writer which we all forget about which is the most important thing to remember about Jane Austen is how funny she is so and I would I argued in my very first book that she could never have been such a good comic writer if she hadn't watched all those passes if they hadn't performed them at home, if she hadn't read them. Because her sense of comic timing is derived from 18th century theatre. Pride and Prejudice is so much dialogue. So it is like being at a play. And then she used to read her novels aloud. And that is like being at a play as well. So for me, was such a a big and undervalued influence how

is mansfield park set against a background of war total war you could say by the standards of the time well

she's a war novelist because you know many of her novels are written in the background of the French wars and the Napoleonic wars. Mansfield Park, I think, is particularly, 1814 is a really interesting year. There's some very interesting books being written in that year. It happens to be my favourite Jane Austen novel, Mansfield Park. I know everybody hates it, but I really love it. I find it so different to the others and so much more serious and so much more interesting. So although she doesn't set out to deal with, she's not a war novelist, but it infiltrates, you know, it's so turbulent, you know, that something is always happening in the shadow hinterlands. You will get that feeling with Mansoor Park of great unease, I think, that the house itself's corrupt. I've always felt that the Crawfords coming in and corrupting the house isn't what's really going on. It's the house that's corrupt. And the house is built on the spoils of the slave trade. So I think it's much more interestingly, politically. The

trips to Antigua, they're to slave plantations?

Yeah. Very clearly. And she says so. And Sir Thomas, the house is built. It's a new house, it's built on the spoils of the slave trade and he goes out because there's unrest and we don't know what that is but there were enslaved riots happening at that time that especially in antigua and he takes his wild son with him in the hope to get him away from wild company which doesn't work but i think you always get that sense of the spoils of the slave trade. And then, of course, Fanny's the only one brave enough to ask Sir Thomas when he comes back and she asks the question about the slave trade. And nobody else is really interested. They don't want to talk more about it, but she does. So it's a very important moment in the novel that this shy, timid, diffident little girl is the one who says, tell me more about what's happening with the slave trade. And again, the Lord Mansfield connection. Anybody reading Mansfield Park is going to think of Lord Mansfield and his role in the abolition of the slave trade. So that's about the nearest, I think, she does come to politics. She stays away from it, a bit like me, but it's there. It

all seems political to me, just the relationships between the sexes and class and who does what to get ahead. I'm not sure she sees a relevant alternative, but it's mostly an indictment as I read those novels.

Yeah, I would agree.

She was an abolitionist, right? Absolutely.

She was obsessed with this really interesting man called Thomas Clarkson, who wrote the first history of the slave trade. He was also from Liverpool, or he went around Liverpool. I know he might have been from Liverpool, I can't remember. But she was obsessed with Thomas Clarkson, who was the first person to argue that instead of slave and human traffic, if you want to trade with Africa, you could do this with goods, with beads, with clothes, with all sorts of different things. And she really, really, so she absolutely, I think, abhorred the slave trade and everything gets stood for. And

when does the opium trade pop up in her novels?

Does it?

Persuasion? Maybe I'm misremembering. Anyway, we will ask Chad GPT in our spare time when we're done. Definitely. You recommend a movie, Patricia Rosima's version of Mansfield Park, which is now on my to-watch list. But why is that more interesting and vital than most other Austen adaptations? I

think at the time, it was quite a while ago I saw it, and it did feel very refreshing because it really engaged with the politics that engaged with the slave trade i think it revealed franny as more as more spirited it's not a faithful adaptation put it that way and i know it really did divide people but i thought at the time i was like it's really fun it's really risque and it's fresh but then i saw it again recently and i was a little disappointed i was like oh it's not as brilliant. You know how you go back to a film that you love and you think oh that's so great and you go back and you're like I don't think anybody's really got Mansfield Park right but there was something very new and fresh and vivid about the way that she filmed it as well. Filmically it's really interesting and I really liked her depiction of Tom Bertram the wayward son and his engagement with the slave trade and I really liked the way Harold because Harold Pinter played Sir Thomas and he was really a he was he was a bully which I've always felt that Sir Thomas is a bully so she took she took lots of lots of risks I mean ultimately she doesn't get Fanny right but I just felt at the time yeah keep it fresh keep it relevant we don't have to be so faithful and we don't have to be like all frocks and smocks and big houses. Like every Jane Austen adaptation, the house is way bigger than what it would have been. She's not interested in aristocrats. She's interested in gentility. So she's, they've always kind of got it wrong. And the ones that films I like, I love Clueless. Clueless is the best. Yes,

love that.

Adaptation. Because it's so funny. She just gets the funniness. And that's the really important thing. Clueless is so great. And that has never lost its charm for me. Your

book on Yves Lenoir, the phrase pops up, and I quote, naturally fastidious. Why can it be said that so many British people are naturally fastidious? Your

questions are so crazy. I love it. Did I say that?

I think Evelyn Waugh said it, not you, but it's in the book. Do you know? Give me the context of that. I'd have to go back and look. It's just in my memory. But it's a

claim. It's a great phrase. We

can evaluate the claim on its own terms right i'm not sure they are anymore it seems maybe they once were but the stiff upper lip tradition seems much weaker yeah i

think evelyn war would be appalled with the way england has gone um naturally fastidious yeah i think, it's different to reticent, isn't it? It's fastidious. Hard to please, it means, doesn't it? Naturally hard to please. I kind of think that's quite true of Evening War's general, certainly of Evening War, because he was naturally fastidious. That literally sums him up in a phrase.

If I go to Britain as an American, I very much have the feeling that people derive status from having negative opinions more than positive. And that's quite different from this country. Would you agree with that? I

would. And I would agree. And I think one of the things I have always loved about America was that I know it's such a cliche about, you know, Americans have this sense of positivity and you can do anything, but it's true. And, you know, and I do find in England, there is a sort of real ee-all sort of dour sort of putting you down or putting you in your place, but I kind of like that as well. So like with Scouse humour, it's very much keep you in your place don't get too big for your boots and i kind of like it because i think the corollary the you know the opposite of that is what the phoniness of americans like you know when you go to la and everyone's like oh my god you're so beautiful that's amazing and like you're oh my god like you know and you just think you don't mean a word what's coming out your lips so i think like the balance. New York feels like the balance is pretty right. When

did that start in Britain? Does it exist at the peak of Victorian Britain? One doesn't feel it in John Stuart Mill or many other writers. What's the evolution of that? Because you've written British biographies about a number of different eras. You

mean the stiff upper lip?

Well, the negativity a means of conferring status upon yourself. Yeah.

I mean, I think it's slightly tall poppy syndrome that you don't want to big someone up too much because it makes you feel small and it takes your light away from you if you're a tall poppy. But I think it is tied in with something that I've really come to value the older I've got, which is English reticence and English diffidence. And I actually, the older I get, the more I'm like, I really like that because it does feel very intrinsic to who I am as a British person, which is, it may not be, you might say negative. I might say realistic. You might say pessimistic. I might say honest. You know, it just sort of depends how we define these things. But I think when someone gives you a compliment or to me, they mean it in England, they mean it because they very rarely give you one. And I'm like, oh, you must really mean that. And that has value. And I think that stiff upper lip has value. And as a therapist, it also does not have value. As a therapist family secrets are the worst thing that you can ever do so I see both both sides of it if that makes sense but in terms of the novel and in terms of the great writers I think you're on to I think I think you're right about that there is a sort of deep pessimism that runs like a strain that runs through it. However, as with Evelyn Wall and Jane Austen, you always get that leavened with satire, with humor, with don't take yourself too seriously. I think that's the great British sin. Don't take yourself too seriously. If you take yourself too serious, you're doomed. And do you read Wall

as actually a snob and a misanthrope, or is that a kind of put on, and that actually he's very good-natured about humanity? The

latter, I completely think it's put on. And I argued this really strongly in my book, that everything was a joke. Everything was up for a joke. And he played the part of the sort of grumpy colonel, which he talked about himself. Deep down, he was incredibly kind to his friends. He was deeply sensitive. He wasn't a snob. And again, he makes fun of the aristocracy in Brideshead, even though people don't always see that. I don't think he was any of those things. I think he was a snob about cleverness. I think he was a bit of an intellectual snob. I think if you were really stupid, he wouldn't have much time for you. maybe that's a British thing too, but he really valued wit and good conversation. But it didn't matter whether you were, when he was during the war, his bag man adored him. And there's an interview where they're trying to get this bag man to sort of say, oh, he's a horrible snob, wasn't he? He said, no, he's absolutely lovely. Did he shout at you? Was he horrible to you during the war? No, no, he couldn't have been kinder. And he was somebody who knew him intimately during the war and he he just did not have a bad word to say about him so it's become a bit of a parody and he became a bit of a parody of it himself he parodied himself but i think he played that part and for me he certainly

was was not a snob if i understand your life history correctly you and your husband come from very different status bands in British society. How do you think that shapes the books and biographies you write? I

think we're both interested in social class, but I think if you live in England, you are because it permeates everything. Another thing I really love about America is, and I know there is an American class system, I know that, but I've always felt very free in America because people don't judge me by my accent. Whereas in England, you're instantly, or you were instantly judged by, oh, you're a northerner, that means that you steal things or you're a northerner, that means that you're stupid. So, and I've never got that in America. So I think my husband and I have always been really fascinated and we come from different classes, different backgrounds, but the great unifying thing for us always was books and literature and art and music and all the things that we have in common. So I think it's, yeah, I mean, it does shape, it does shape the writing because I'm interested in people who write about social class, Jane Austen, even now obviously to those writers and same with him but do

you have the sense that in your books you're working through something about your own life and your own history and that's what you have to get out and that by doing it indirectly there's some way you can psychologically resolve that where it won't quite work so directly. Because I feel that way about my books, that I'm always writing about myself in some ways.

100%. And I've said it many, many times that all biographers are writing autobiographies. Even the fact that you choose to write about these certain people, I mean, it's something that appeals to you or you may have been shaped by. So I was really fascinated. Going back to the Hardy book for a moment, I was really interested in working class women's stories because I come from that background. And the background I come from, it's very matriarchal. It's Catholic. It's women had a lot of power. I could never understand middle class women saying women have no power because I was like, oh my God, you'd never been in my family because you know they were always the storytellers they were really part the men were like really not as strong as the women so I was really fascinated by female law in Thomas Hardy like what are these stories that go through the generations do we believe them these illegitimate children I was always always interested in giving people a voice now I wouldn't be drawn to that if I hadn't had that background because I know that's how women talk and speak. And I think Hardy was really fascinated by working class women and their strength of character and their stories and their, you know, all those things. So I think you're completely right. I don't think the single book I've written where I feel cold, where I feel like I don't know this world or I don't share something of myself. And I think it's just a fallacy to say, oh, I'm really objective. I wrote that book and I'm so objective. I just don't think it works like that. I think you see things that you think, ah, okay, that's really fascinating. Somebody else might say something completely different and not see it. So I think, yeah, for me, there's always my own autobiography. And I hope it doesn't distort it too much. No,

that's great.