Â鶹Éç

Available for 28 days

Amanda Root and Crystal Clarke are our readers in a programme marking 250 years since Jane Austen's birth. Austen's father encouraged her to play the piano, at her home in Chawton she practiced every day before breakfast and the family collection of music books have been digitized by the University of Southampton. Our musical tapestry includes compositions by Händel and Haydn, recently recorded by the pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason for her album Jane Austen's Piano. The scores for numerous TV and film adaptations by composers including Isobel Waller-Bridge and the actor-musician Johnny Flynn breathe new life into Austen's works on screen. And in the novels themselves her characters meet at dances, in Emma the mystery of who has paid for a piano sets tongues wagging while in Sense and Sensibility the sensible Elinor Dashwood has no real interest in music but her rather more romantic sister Marianne loves playing the pianoforte and singing. Amanda Root played Anne Elliot in the 1995 Â鶹Éç adaptation of Persuasion and Crystal Clarke played Georgiana Lambe in the 2019- 2023 ITV adaptation/ continuation of Sanditon. Producer: Kirsty McQuire READINGS: An extract from Edward Austen-Leigh’s Memoir of Jane Austen, quoting her niece Caroline Northanger Abbey Emma Sense and Sensibility An extract from Austen's Sanditon fragment Mansfield Park An extract from Heiresses by Miranda Kaufmann Sanditon by Kate Riordan Mansfield Park Pride and Protest by Nikki Payne Pride and Prejudice Emma Persuasion Death Comes to Pemberley by PD James